We played the conception game like we were in the middle
of a hurricane. Ate bananas for dinner, went full bonobo.
We dreamt our tiny apartment was an island, tip-toed around
the lava kitchen tiles, drew a waterfall out of the clawfoot.
There were moments we wanted it all to end. For this to be
our awakening, our silence, an opera with a machine gun
in its mouth. But we wanted you, too, not knowing who you
were: your strawberry pigtails, the microcosmic laugh that can grab
a human heart & rip it like a phonebook in half. We could feel
a presence better than us, finally, until it became us. Your little spit-ups,
toes the size of orange Tic-Tacs, a distraction into another world.
Truth is we might have killed you by imagining you. Some days
now we wake up, hot skin tea-kettling hot skin, & the fire
goes eyeball white, blank as an EKG, the idea of the moment
somehow always greater than the moment the ember floats away.