Before You Were Born
Poem for June 5th
I like watching you waft through the house. My husband said.
My very own little moon.
I could begin to feel our daughter, when she was not sleeping swim
towards our hands.
Before you were born.
I only wanted joy.
Lifting my dress up.
My girlfriend putting her ear to my belly.
My father measuring out the eagle’s wings.
It doesn’t matter if it’s finance, or romance, death. Someone said. There is suffering.
So I try to pretend it’s not pointless, that there is a reason for pain, and there is also a reason to eat and brush the teeth and hang up the clothes. Cutting the dead roses from the stems.
Dreaming of you, tugging at the chord connecting the two of us. Your brow already furrowed in utero. Well that sounds exactly like you! People said when I told them how I had seen you, already beautiful and already so dangerously charming. Cheeky. Cheeky. A boat speeding through the marsh. The face on a wanted poster.