To the unborn

Your unarrival surpassed the egg timer’s chime,

passed the drying of the body’s living rivers.

The desert air rubs sand into the eyes that snub print’s edge.

The weights of days hang heavy on such lids.

Time clicks a rhythm.

A squeak squeals out a grackle’s throat,

a soft thrill to New England ears.

You cannot toddle in now.

You’re too late, little one.

I’ll admit: it’s okay.

I wouldn’t know the first thing to do,

except, perhaps, to stop your crying,

from thirst, from hunger, from a diaper laden,

full of an existential crisis,

a fire larger than the dying red giant,

(around which we all revolve,

certain of uncertainty).

What follows a weeping? 

A silence, a sleeping, Kindergarten,

the solidity of object,

the knowing that because a mother’s left the room

she is not gone,

but always would have stayed with you. 

Your possible histories seal sadness within.

What might have you looked like?

What stories would you write?

You are a baby of vapor, 

a flurry of snowflakes,

a howl of winter calling for home.

How the walls tremble, how windows rattle.

How a woman longs for, yet fears the cramp of reunion.

You are the fibers that rip,

Fury’s pull of the oar,

that measure of water

that gives passage to vessels;

surly from the piercing wood’s splinters,

stabbing velvet ice water.

Why didn’t you come?

Where have you drifted?

Where will you grow now?

What blooms in your place?

Perhaps it is the softness of grass.

When morning dew evaporates

it leaves behind a peace

for each child that might have been:

each howl, each smile, each tantrum.

This is what the unborn brings.

—Emily Romano