Poems for My Lover’s Unborn Child Out West
The moment he created you,
he said, was an ending. His
ending triggered you. Like
a scream into a canyon,
you are the echo back, a ricochet,
a likeness of
his sound blended, spattered out
on the canyon walls, then,
turning the corner,
coming back to him.
*
Since he rubbed you
into another woman, I float you
my thistle milk whenever I wish
you had been my bead.
*
I know her body
wasn’t strange like mine and
therefore, a home. But you would
have liked it here. I have
soft wood floors and hard ripe
apples. Did you even try?
*
You are not yet a star
but you already make enough light
for me to see that I was/am lost.
*
You are a hot coil;
you cook me,
cook him, but you
don’t yet speak the language
of burns.
*
When I get upset
I sing you a lullaby:
I rock you, rock you
until you sleep. Your
mother keeps you, keeps you
and I weep.
*
He wove you into her
while I was away.
You are small, breathing
only your mother’s soup;
your gills, a delicate, light, lace;
moving, mirroring, how I open
then close the door when
I ask him to leave.
*
Shhh—listen closely,
a star burns
brightest
right before
it dies and you
are that moment, little one.
*
A birthday gift to you: I
fade so far east,
I am another country,
another
century, another
galaxy away—
—promise me your first
breath will
erase/release me.