What God Wants

God doesn't want you to kill babies and neither does your 10-year-old step-son. That's what he tells you when you are headed west on Lombard street, in the sleeting rain, in the steady gray, in the impenetrable monochrome of a Portland winter.
        I am in the middle of a sentence when he says this. I am suddenly stuck on repeat. I try and begin my sentence over and over again and all I hear is, "Kate, stop killing babies." My husband glances over from the driver's seat. My step-son begins humming.
        I remember saying things at ten like "Dad, you don't have a singing voice," just because I knew that he felt vulnerable about it. I wasn't trying to be mean, I just saw a soft spot and pushed to see what would happen. I remember feeling excitement mixed with dread and regret.  I remember not meaning it, just watching to see what would happen. Would he cry? Would I get in trouble?
        When I hear this, I don't immediately say anything to Micheal. I give my husband a slight nod to indicate that I am fine, but my eyes well up with tears. "Kate, stop killing babies," I hear it again in my mind.
       Micheal is dealing with my miscarriage in his own way.  Maybe he's angry with me.  He was on his way to being an older brother when I lost the baby. When we told him about the pregnancy, he had spent weeks singing and dancing.  He had been effervescent. We were becoming a family on a new level, and everything between the three of us felt different. It was made all the more special for Micheal because the baby's due date was the same day as his birthday.  In his mind they were twinned.
       Realizing where we are, I remember the billboard we have so often passed so I say, "Oh, did you see that billboard? The one that says, 'Stop killing babies"--God'?" For a brief, unmistakable moment, I hate the Christians ferociously.  We'd passed the billboard many times and even commented on it, Micheal and I talking about what it meant and why it would be posted for the public to see.
       "Yes," he replies, and then says it again, "Kate, stop killing babies, God." Maybe he laughs a little.
       I nod,"Mhmmm...., that's a funny billboard, huh?"
       It's hard not to leap to my own defense, about how I loved that child and didn't have a choice. But I don't. This is Micheal's moment, a moment in which he is articulating some sense of loss, his loss. To overshadow it with more explanation of the love we had for the baby, for the inevitable and irreparable moment in which we lost her is not the point, so I remain quiet.
      My tears are quiet too. They keep coming. I look out the window.  The Satin Sugar silo, solid and white, is glowing eerily in the gray light. The railroad cars are standing in sendentary queue, cold and remote.
       We each sit quietly for a while, making our separate ways through this.

Fever 103

I, too, am a Mollusk

like you,

ship-shape and hard,

twisted in liquid sheets,

damp and turning
in slow,
dark, revolutions

Spine to the outside

gripping mitts

and a

forgotten tail.

We, two, identical,

dreaming in blood-rhythm,

in a phlegm house,

Little squire

Little purpose

Little squatter

In your crimson

World float,

Turn the wheel

of that

Hard dream.

I, to the sea

You, to the land.

Me, pushing off

You, sinking in.

We are a love-

knot,

intertidal,

two old species,

fossils pressed

into slick

stone
geologic crush and melt

shoving off 

toward the
soft
promise

of Matter

Letter to a Lost Child

You, tiny perfect puncher,

Little softness

Riding around

My ribs middle

Lowing to my insides

Keening and flexing.

I remember you

Soft as you were

Like a love note to my life

Little wonder

Bright day

Sudden star

So short

Your insistent

Pedaling toward

Me

And mine to you

Through the

Curtain of flesh and fluid.

Never doubt I wanted you.

Knew you somehow

As if out of a dream.

A cloudshape I couldn’t

Quite catch, or see.

Until there was nothing left

But burning between

My legs, those strobing lights

And the surgeon’s congealed

Clicking.

First Trimester

Crustacean,

Caddis,

Fossil,

What husk will you make

For form to take?

What robust shape?

The sky splits for you

And pours,

Dendritic branches mount and shake.

Little life,

Budding into eyelet

Vein, and tidy hemisphere

How hot is your

Heart?

How white your heat?

How will you greet the

Spindle of
Light that brightens your eye,

Makes your fingers separate

And flex? Are you husk enough

Without

Creative flaw?

Will the bright timing

And the soft wanting be

Invitation enough?

Unnamable,

Gather and float, easy,

Work,  You Fish,

You Mollusk ,

You Shard,

Make a sturdy house.

Fill it with light.

Snowflakes

My stepson, Micheal (pronounced ME-Hall), and I are cutting out snowflakes.  It is December 22nd and outside there is no real snow. Four days ago I was pregnant and now I am not.  My baby miscarried and I am trying to carry on. So Macker and I make snowflakes; we decorate the tree; listen to Christmas carols on the radio.
     Portland is soft this afternoon, almost balmy and dry. The persimmons on the tree, in September so vibrant, are now ashen on the limbs.  My garden is a briar-y tangle; the rhubarb stalks yellow, melting into the soft soil; the tomato plants are reduced to greying sticks stiffly moving in the breeze. Micheal and I work quietly using old blueprints his father has put aside for me to use for artwork. We snip quietly, concentrating. Micheal is attempting to make the world's smallest snowflake. He is working so hard he has forgotten to breathe and he lets out a hot breath and looks at me, flushed.
     I am trying to remember how to make paper snowflakes. Micheal looks up at me and suggests I cut the corners to make it look less like a square.  Diligently, I take his advice wishing my scissors were sharper as I cut away thick sections of the folded paper.
      I am snipping away confidently, when all of a sudden, I realize I may have made an irreparable error: Shit,  I think, I've cut the middle out of it! Carefully, I unfold the paper to assess the damage. As I open it, I see that there is no center to my snowflake. I hold it up, and stare at the gap I have created at the snowflake's center.  I push my finger through the empty space and mean to say, "Look the middle is gone," but instead I hear myself saying to Micheal, "Look, the baby's gone."
      For one awful moment, we look at each other, both disbelieving the words that I have spoken, baffled by my mistake.  And then, because there is nothing else to do, we start laughing.
      "You are addicted to that baby," Micheal says to me.

The Quiet Aftermath of Loss

This poem by Emily Dickinson has been coming to me the last few days... After great pain a formal feeling comes-- The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs; The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore? And yesterday--or centuries before?The feet, mechanical, go round A wooden way Of ground, or air, or ought, Regardless grown, A quartz contentment, like a stone. This is the hour of lead Remembered if outlived, As freezing persons recollect the snow-- First chill, then stupor, then the letting go. Emily Dickinson