Hope

What could have been—
Littlest life
Measured in fruit?
Holding a knife,

I remember,
As I slice a plum
That was this week’s—
And cut my thumb.

Other bellies
Swell around me
While my blood still
Comes like the sea.

Nothing grows under
My ribs—no teeth,
No bones, no soul.
Instead, beneath

My heart, it’s empty,
The beats my own.
I walk alone,
But not alone.

The thing with feathers
Has made a nest
Between my lungs
And by my breast.

My hands hold shadows—
Years have lined
Them, too, with what
They long to find.