I longed for a child whom I talked to in my dreams,
singing funk and jazz all Sugar Lee.
She did not come through the rolling door.
It was late and the joint was shut.
All the seed had been spent in another’s womb.
I look at the bare skin on my arm where I was going to tattoo binary stars.
I call her missing from me Andromeda.
That opps-a-daisy who wouldn’t have been an oops-a-daisy at all, never did arrive.
Another false alarm.
How many times have I pissed in a cup
wondering if I will be happy with the blue hieroglyphs that appear out of my fog like a fortune teller.
The Liptus test of my viability a time bomb going off.
Tick tock my biological clock.
At the threshold you retreated back into your head,
musing on the practicalities of things and
offering your support like a good and noble hand maiden
Did you forget who’s heir I spoke of when I told you “I think I might be pregnant”?
How many times I have whispered that in my mind. A day late, a week late, a month or nine.
The space between us grew wider with each word you spoke
as it did when we talked on the telephone about things this evening.
I remember falling into a chasm until I numbed out, spaced out.
instead of raging, I cried it all away in the way women do
secretly in bathrooms and with pillows over head.
But as life would have it, when the music stopped I didn’t have a chair.
All the hype and poetics landed on barren ground, like my womb is now;
I can feel where I numbed out,
As we spoke of this story, I re-membered and wondered if staying closed off would be easier.
The thawing gives way to heart aches; womb ache; feeling the rug pulled out,
and I find the places I recoiled from trusting your words of union.
My bleeding days are numbered now and so I grieve all the lost opportunities,
all the desires that are not mine to manifest.
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