The doctor says a lot without saying much. It’s too early to tell

us it’s too late. Outside the clinic, a woman wishes a blessed morning 

and sings tomorrow tomorrow I love you tomorrow to her buggy 

full of scrap. There are little heartbeats in everything. I know 

because I’m tired of noticing. What began as a sketch 

in someone’s notebook became a building that’s here and full 

of plants on windowsills that keep hoping through the glass. 

At a meeting disguised as a party, I snap my plastic spoon 

in the rocky road. I’m nursing whatever small cruelties will let me. 

Another happy hour worth forgetting, another day in paradise. 

We come home to find the last good tomatoes have turned 

but aren’t ready to let them go. To bring a child from nothing 

into ours wouldn’t be wrong to say is wrong. Because it would be 

a cliché. Just like this rain. Imagine a version of today

any fuller. Imagine how much we’d have loved to feed her all this.

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