moments lifted
( published in Feminist Studies )
The child on the Upper West Side
has your hair, my freckled skin.
I see him standing there
on the wrong sidewalk
his hand gripped by the wrong father
as they disappear into the lower deck
of a parking garage.
And I,
paralyzed at the curb,
do nothing to stop him—
useless as my body after sex.
In the morning I see him again,
staring from across the table.
A thin layer of dust coasts his hair,
dust from my weekend task
of stripping years of paint
from plywood cabinets.
Even as I drive you to work,
I see him in the backseat—
drool soaked thumb, head thrust back,
stuffed bear tucked under his chin.
The simple things haunt me:
climbing from the tub, his hair
trailing streams of soapy water
as he disappears in the towel I hold open.
I clutch these scenes in passing, moments
lifted from the comfort of strollers
so that sometimes when we make love,
I imagine I have a womb,
that incomprehensible pear-shaped hole
for you to enter and pull from its depths
the son we will never have.