with a childlike lilt,
coy, playful.
If the eldest is a girl,
you'll have a perfect
babysitter!
Gentle commands—
because her voice
doesn't pitch
the way it used to,
raspy menace,
all throat & plosives.
Motherhood is the question of this decade,
To do it, to will it, to imagine the current
Streams of multiple lives to manage.
To even pose the question
Implies an ampleur of time
This:
( )
And not this
()
Slice open my body
like a papaya,
seeds spilling out
in a thick tangle
of blood and clots,
Split, a stream turned
Brook, thinning its own rush.
This
[()]
And eventually this
[] ()
She says,
children stop you from
feeling lonely.
I learned rivers run under
the ocean,
same materials and yet
distinct enough to have separate
drumming currents.