THE FIRST TIME
SARA MOORE WAGNER
When I lost the baby, the man said sleep,
and he was above me holding
her body, a cloud in the sky,
the slow morphine drip pat, pat.
Time moves in the hallways and firmament,
and I believe it when the man tells me
about tissue growth on the outside of my uterus.
I am a house being coated in sugar, over
and over, my unlit street stretches out
into a path in the woods, my baby
walks towards me with her hands up—
I might push her in the oven to have a taste of what it feels like
to be her, walking so young towards empty.
Give me a way or a pill to make this neater,
give me a knife or a pill: another scene.
∘∘∘