Welcome to the Baby Steps Bonanza

I’ve got my mother to agree that abortion

is maybe-slightly-not-quite

Murder, maybe exceptions

could be a reason to release

All this tension. All that fear.

And then the next day its—

I’ve pulled the whisper over me again

And denied the windows. Denied the alarm.

Denied the existence of the to-do list

with its many steps, demanding

what a person is supposed to do

Every morning.

yet I don’t sleep. I stare.

And then the next day its—

my aunt makes a joke about the wealth gap

between her and a foreign people

and I have taken classes, and read novels, and given

endless apologies for sins I have not made.

It’s about neither of us.

It’s about both.

And then the next day its—

Hating yourself the way

carpet hates the floor

the way a gatling gun hates air

the way teeth run from skin

tired of piecing yourself back together

like forcing magnets to meet.

But again. Again.

The baby pulls itself up from the carpet

No parent notices. No sibling cares.

But growing up and going on its—

Just what Babies do. Even as they’re crying

So wait a day more, and—

What point is there to agony?

I am walking again.