once upon a time, I told someone I
would never have children of my own, they’d
ruin my body and
put angry inflection into my tone: I can’t even
keep myself fed, how could I give someone
else a home? I’d refused to open my
womb or build an extra bedroom
on the patchwork construction of my
half baked heart: I would not start
giving my all to any unbroken thing the
capacity to fall. then, then, then then thenthenthenthen
then, the image of you, 27 years old and
full like an english sail, sunshine
flowing, roses growing, smile-knowing,
barefooted, prevailed, with blackberry stained fingertips
that would come to mean nothing but soft-swaying hips,
sugar and wine, not starched tablecloth memories of
vinegar brine, clothesline
elena with halo of breeze and buttercups, white dress flutter-ups,
babies raised on patience and muttered abrupt love, on the wings
of mockingbirds, bluejays, finches, doves, swaddled in
poetry, in knowing they’re enough. outstretched arms
made of ground-ridden feathers, shallow forevers, and
always togethers, I want to make a home with you, and
children grown on poetry slams mixed with artistic phrases
instead of binges and purges and white powders and
razors; these children wouldn’t ruin my body, not even
if they were held there: they can round you out like
blossoming pears, well planned summer melons ripe for picking, they can
bat three year old eyelashes at mothers who won’t
credit them with ruining anything.
there were children today. muddy toddlers, un-
steady wobblers with innocence blooming amongst the
most painful spoken word, poetry from
flightless birds only now gaining flight after
laying down the archetype of might, of putting up a
fight against silencing the youth of this mural, against hushing the
“boy” who knows she’s a girl, against
personal Kinos burying pearls: these cherubic
innocents reminded me, they’re the only legacy
I can leave with the world. they’re
the fingerprints without DNA, the holy tints
of early may, the dropping of hints and the baling of hay,
the impact to hit who, when I leave, will stay.
any children there are, love, I promise to
hold them, strive always to know them, give myself
beholden to their youthful intake and outlook on
strife, to notice the beauty with which they prove rife, to
swallow remembrance like fire or knife, and know you and
I have nurtured that life. portland to
canada, london, asheville, hauling guitars and trombones and
cats,we’ll flit from knothole to birdhouse and
back, making up for any small thing we may lack with
the furnace of us blazing bright in the black.