THE CHILD WE DIDN'T HAVE

has your broad shoulders and my weak eyes.

She's blessed with her mother's face

while she has my stumpy limbs and lack of grace,

and in her fretful unborn sleep the sighs

I won't be disturbed by are not her strangulation,

crib death, asphyxiation, fever, seizure, paralysis.

There will be no sympathetic pangs, no morning

sickness,

no clipped umbilicus,

post partums, blues, shocks of separation

except the one we made the last day. If this is

not the exact transcription, this is close

enough as to be admissible evidence. Let it be said

I slept in the fetal position on the floor

near the space heater, you occupied the space in the

bed.

You get to keep the house, I get to keep the kid.