Jan/Feb 2023

“What if I can’t do this?” she’d said, finally giving voice to a fear that had crept in sometime during her second trimester.

Once, I thought that becoming a mom meant forgetting the writer. Now, I see that she never left. She’s always been there, surrounded by stories, waiting for me to find her.

I know now that I gave you up too easily. I should have fought harder, run away, found another way to survive, so you could live. But that is not what happened.

I often fall asleep at night, pinching the excess mounds that have filled in around my equator. I once had a small waist, a flat tummy like the woman on the magazine cover. But time muddles all things, even our bodies, smudging the edges and flattening the roundness of it all.

You might break anywhere.

Sometimes my son looks at me / the way an animal would—

I may be at the end of a line or at a convergence. I don’t know yet

proximity / is not the only proof of existence. Yet, I must be // viewed relentlessly while asleep

Somewhere in Mongolia’s darkening evening / a woman is milking

There is nothing that isn’t mine and mine alone. / This child that we won’t have.

I want to go back in time to meet my real baby / born into candlelit bathwater.