She’s looking for someone to bother, she says,
belly swelling beneath pink baby-doll tee.
She points down.
This is what she’s been up to.
“School? I don’t go; I got bored.”
But now? “He works,” she says.
“I sit at home and watch tv
and call him and tell him how bored I am.
It’s
fun.”
This girl, still running from her nightmares –
still dreaming them up –
too smart for school,
not smart enough to amuse herself,
contorts history
to come full feminist circle,
balloon-sculpture
pre-feminist dream,
only this girl can’t talk at dinner parties
or cook for dinner parties
or do much
of anything at all.
Scared of what she could be
and all that she never could,
she’s chosen this store-bought life
of unhappiness pre-packaged,
the tragedy bold-printed
on the family-proof label:
Take two. Wait twenty years.
Take two more.
What is failure to her
when it all means nothing,
and the disappointment
stretching my cheeks red
just enflames the word
judgment?
I want to understand
what she wants,
but am afraid even this
will prove too much for her.
Why must she
want anything at all?
What can she be feeding her baby
when she barely asks anything of the air?
Her attitude
is bigger than she is.
She looks half an ambition away from scared,
half a lifetime away from bitter.
This girl
is
When she laughs,
you can hear empty streets rattle.
Good thing
she does not care.
He works, she says,
and moves off to find someone else to bother.
Somewhere,
he readies himself for her growing anger,
the baby to take its own air,
tiny fingers pushing off against her to gain speed.
I am left empty-handed,
mid-wife to her stillborn dreams.
.jpg)
