She is a widening bowl for absence— unending inclination grieving the emptied months, the cellophaned boxes of pastel candles, long ago shelved alongside cake pans in animal shapes. No nursling’s milky grin, arresting her heart. So long, stellar IQ. Gene pool, dimming. Dammed. Still, the cosmic stardust hourly sifts through the atmosphere. Celestial legacies minutely embed each atom, in its descent— carbon, salt, iotas of iron—infusing us all. Cached within the most intimate cells, even the vacant womb cradles hints of heaven, hope, a borrowed moon, on the wane. Somewhere, even now, unexpected and unembraced, a slip of a life waxes strong, perhaps gravitating our way. O windfall child of the longest dream, Come, name us.
Laurie Klein is the author of Where the Sky Opens and Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, MAR, New Letters, Barrow Street, 13th Moon, Adana, and Every Day Poems, and they have also been heard on NPR member stations. She lives in the Inland Northwest.
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