Letter to the Unborn
You do not yet live & it is possible you never will. Still
I mow the lawn with your name under tongue, the letters pulsing
together like a maraca of bees. I rub the magic 8 ball of my gut
& pretend I am a mother, but the clouds read better luck
next time. I palm the handle of my hatchet & imagine us deep
in the woods by a body of water so green you could dream up
anything, shaving kindling off the years, making memories
we’re bound to forget. I rest the god of my hand on your neck,
silently show you how to blow a small galaxy of wind
between your fingertips, how to turn thin air into energy.
Our best conversations happen on days like this, summer sun
a mirage of itself. Gasoline on my wrists, wondering if you’ll exist.
Letter to Together Alone
You’re nearly 3 in my mind & I have you on my shoulders
like a Greek myth on a trail by a creek in the mountains.
I haven’t hiked in years & you want to cry but even your acorn
mind understands the job at hand. Your mother’s in England
again & I feel responsibility like a mattress on my face.
Maybe tonight I will share with you the secret of slicing open
a hot dog, lining it with cheese, all the small pleasures
of melt & char & mustard dripping on our knees. I’ll spin
a little early Merle, dance with you on my feet. Together
we will make a call transcontinental, brush our teeth clockwise,
& I’ll dream it was all real with a miniature hand to squeeze.
Letter to the Continental Divide
Watching you surface from the primordial dark into the world
of formaldehyde & gray latex was like watching an octopus
change formation with the blink of its eyelids. You were a wet ball
of red yarn & in that moment I wanted to die while you slept
across my chest. The best feelings are not named & you were a human
feeling light press against your mind for the first time. A perfect
chrysalis, the beginning of knowledge. I held you like a water balloon,
a pinned grenade, the extension cord of your mother who lay there
in the glory & pain of inevitable creation. Dear god please say
you didn’t destroy her body. Say the fallen angel inside her breathing
will find flight once again. You have changed the whole dynamic.
I won’t sleep for years. I will show you with my arms how to cocoon
until a pearl of sun cuts out the moon & you break into a wild blue.
My child, may you too learn to laugh like the trees at midnight.
