What To Expect When You’re Expecting Something Else
I was a cluster of cells, a zygote, a would-be zeitgeist screwed into her
guts. She had a tender mouth, an eye for Maiden's Blush. A borrowed
Dart, just the two of us. There’s always someone who wants to unmanifest
things for unmarried girls. I was conjured with Joe Cocker records and a
raft of Southern Comfort on a Mississippi party barge nearly on the rocks,
I am here to say forgetting is to gone-away like caboose to late-night train.
On the phone the nurse said the clinic was unmarked that she ought to look
for a yellow VW beetle. Once I caught a ladybug in my hands, legs so small
they felt like whispers. Maybe she pulled in, pulled off one mitten. Maybe
she pressed the cigarette lighter, wanting smoke, the burn of something
sure. Hand on a Winston, mind on her baby brother. The size of his pinkie
when he was born. I don’t know what she said when she drove away. My
ears not shelled enough to gather sounds of that world.
Posted 10/07/13
Originally published in UnShod Quills, 2013