I thought I’d have children by now and today at noon my white sneakers
press the fallen petals deeper into the impressionable dirt—magnolia,
I think, or some cousin, waxy and wide, pink stains spreading like fairy
blood, like communion bread dipped in wine or those third-grade science
projects where you spill some water on coffee paper and look! a rainbow
seeping through your fingers, spreading unstoppable across the fragile film.

I thought I’d have at least one by now and as I walk I notice how the off-white
of my worn shoes matches the cherry blossoms smeared on the soil, not so pure
as you’d think, stained with tiny tan dots and worm-bitten and bespeckled
with gravel. the balding grass is flooded with it, like the new year’s confetti
that blows across times square for weeks after, pinched under a taco cart wheel
in the final week of january when the year already seems spoilt like compost.

The thing is, I’d like to have a child by now and the only time I can pray
is when I walk, when I am piggybacked into praise by the way the window
of the apartment across the street glints at golden hour or the way the shaking dog
sticks close to his owner as I pass or the way a female cardinal’s swift wings
look like a japanese fan. I am the shaking dog. I am ever ready to bolt from your side,
imagining I can outrun this gnawing ache and sprint my way to serenity.

Is it my fault I don’t have a child by now? and then the rain comes, reams of it
like beaded curtains, all let loose at once like my fear and my need to be right
when I am alone and the music swells and I dance and dance until I have
sweated out all my insecurities and finally let myself lean into your shoulder.
be still, you say. but I am a shaking dog and my shoes are not white and I am forever
bloodletting petals onto pavement as the rain skitters like a wild animal around me.

I see myself holding my friends’ children and giving talks about singleness
and spiritual heirs and I do not want it. I pull a veil across my thoughts
so you will not see the curse prepared for you should you take a hammer
to my wanting and smash my soul into something better and unbearable.
as I walk past the trees I look up and I am standing in the center of a pillar
of cloud or of white fire and I am wearing a bridal veil of bleeding blossoms.