Quick!

I’m asking her to live
without me, & she knows it.

- from Time, by Zeina Hashem Beck

I thought I might not bleed
this month.

I cried in the shower, thinking of the babies
I didn’t want to birth.
                                      (But.)

My breasts felt like I could succeed
at nursing, they were so swollen,
pained by the falling water.

But they were empty.
And then I bled.

And you, ankles showing,
on the precipice
                          of walking away.

I nursed you in a hospital room
high over a circle of city streets.

And then you learned to feed yourself.
Now we don’t even notice
when you lift your fork to your mouth.

I watercolor us, mother, child,
centered. So is the open window,
that distant horizon.

Quick!
                How do I face my passing
as you emerge
like your first words, then sentences?

Your whole language
                always our vanishing point.