The baby didn't grow.
His helix was made
from old stuff, entropic.
He sailed a while,
his heartbeat charged
with light, a tiny blip
on the Sea of Womb,
but papers rustled,
clipboards bore the weight
of this note and that
and doctors closed the door
behind them leaving the word
reabsorb like a small cough.
I hauled it home anyhow,
my useless boat,
where the knitted things
undid their knots.
One night a few weeks later
I awoke to a call,
like that of a boy racing up from the beach
with a sweater full of gull eggs,
and I rose to find the grey morning
lifting its wing.
First published in
Blue Heron Review
Healing Issue, July 2017
Such poignancy, conveyed so quietly.
Oh mama 😭