because now there is a child and its mother is burning
with rapture and terror and has my eyes and teeth.
She is parasite, doppelganger, and I would die
if she unmothered me. She holds my breath as I pass
a speeding truck. She holds my breath when we see
a mother duck and a duckling that would not know
if she died. We are not that kind. Our kind keens
for a long time and the sadness accumulates in our bodies
like lead or tapeworm eggs. I feel sorry for all of us,
the leaving and the left. Everything is bearing down,
bearing down. For “bereft,” make a tearing sound,
which is different from a tearing sound, which is made
behind the face instead of at the base of the throat.
I hold my breath so I can’t choke to death. A child
watches me not eat my sandwich. It is my child,
it is my own watchfulness, we are the same kind,
the sandwich is stale, we stare at it balefully.
It would be kind of the world to let us live until
we are tired of it, until it is stale and unpleasurable.
But that is called heaven, not world. Once I am dead,
I won’t know it, but that doesn’t help. I already miss living—
all its bells and tulips and feelings. There is maybe death
and there is death death and that’s all. I will spend
the rest of my life maybe dying until I actually do.
I have practiced and practiced. I have tried to drive out
the sugar that attracts the sadness. But the mother in me
has fallen in love with everything. I want to tell her
to shut her eyes, to keep her hands in her pockets,
but she must hold the child’s hand as she crosses the street.
She must eat if she wants to see the child, which is better
than eating. I have not left her any white stones
to follow out of this forest. There is only the sweet
dangerous darkness and the fire at the end of it.