I don’t like other people’s babies –
inscrutable faces, soft dense shapes,
powdery smells –
but the two wombs in this marriage
are a bad joke. Neither is up to standard.

Are we allowed to mourn
when we haven’t had every procedure
or rasped our savings to nothing?
I imagine an evaluation form –
didn’t try hard enough.

On a good day I wake with an oak trunk
across my chest. I pretend it’s easy
but I tried to cradle a friend’s doughy infant
through a blaze of muscle spasm,
a migraine acid’s tendrils,

and almost dropped him in the canal.
Could I do it – heft a baby of my own
alongside my tree? We talk
about it in the car, in cafés,
waiting for the doctor, in bed at night. We talk

till day pinks the windows
and decide. I can’t. We can’t.
When the neighbour’s children
shriek and tumble on their trampoline,
we’ll learn to bear it.

 

 

*
From Magma 91, In The Flesh 

 

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