Keep an eye out for mountain lions
is the latest,
down by the pond where the children catch snakes
and what about your husband quitting his job?
He hated it and what about what you hate?
Roommate smoking ******* cigarettes inside, half the night coughing
through paper thin walls
you can’t even ******* in peace.
Peace is a friend you have lost touch with because you are too busy.
Two jobs.
Feet still sore when you get up four times a night to ***.
The new place doesn’t allow pets.
Or smoking.
The rats still make you smile
there’s always the rats.
And feeling like a lava lamp when the baby moves.
Still alive for now.
Why cry?
No one can hear you but the baby probably can.
Listen to the wind in the aspens instead.
Beautifully sad sound.
Already their color is changing
you
have always been changing  
and still you are the little girl who used to leave messages for her cat on an answering machine.
That poor cat died a long time ago.
You’ve missed every cat who has died.
What if your baby dies?
Sometimes
your ******* leak.
THAT is a sign of life.
Life means you have to do another load of laundry.
Separating whites and colors is no longer necessary.
You haven’t heard from your husband today.
He says he’s having a lot of fun at his new restaurant.
Hope so
you’re not bitter
but how can you laugh with him in bed if he works nights?
***** it.
One glass of red wine.
Go on lots of walks.
Drink lots of water.
Soon your baby will be born.

I am eleven, a child
of recent divorce.
(I do know what this means and I do not)
Outside the exotic bird store
I sit with my father and sisters,
savouring the dewy air of a summer night,
the melting sugar on my tongue.  
Instinctively
I turn my head towards the smell of tobacco
and find myself facing the group of teenagers
casually huddled outside a radioshack.  
Elegant blue smoke coils and twists above their heads
and becomes a cloud around them
like an idea that comes in focus
for the moment before it slips into the ether of subconscious.  
I am standing with them
then.  
Ice cream cone replaced by cigarette
careful braids replaced by loose ponytail.  
A freedom I have never felt before.  
And the terror of the realization
that I cannot be caught
not really
not anymore.  
I did not know exhilaration and sadness
could be felt together and it occurs to me
as it will in moments such as these,
that language cannot always be used to untangle a feeling.

To my little one who pushes me from the inside out:
because of you
my eyes see new colors.  
Funny how
there are perhaps as many nuances of love
as there are shades of green in a summer forest
and there is only the word “love.”
Sadness too.  
Like the sadness of giving up
something you didn’t know you wanted.  
That was you.
Was you.
You occupy me.  
Within and without.  
My feet and my heart ache.
I watch how people's’ eyes are drawn to my stomach.  
Celebrating roundness
where there was once flatness
and that was once celebrated
is also a funny thing.  
I do want to laugh and it is easy to.  
Crying is also easy.  
Sometimes they are indistinguishable  
or
one becomes the other.  
Becoming.  
If that is what I am doing
how is it different
from what I have been doing my whole life?

My baby moves in jumps and flutters inside me,
like the barn swallows that make nests
of dirt and twigs outside the restaurant.
Yesterday they disappeared
and I learned that a maintenance man came and hosed them down.  
Tragic, he said.
But necessary.  
Too much bird ****.  
When I got pregnant
it felt like waking up at the top of a roller coaster.
And then an engagement.  
Somehow
this is how my life is going
and somehow it does not feel like cliche.
Ask as many what-ifs as you want
but there is just a single trajectory.
Even though you have to fall asleep one day
before waking in the next.
Moving through concentric circles and trying to find the center.
Biology is happening
in a part of me that I am still getting to know.  
Kaleidoscoping.
She was once the size of a grape
but now I read she can blink her eyelids.
She is also not like the barn swallows.

Two boys and a dog walk to the river
on the cusp of manhood,
each finishing the last half of a cigarette.
Schooling and lovers
and familial diagnoses left behind them
where they parked their car.
Above them,
the colorless and colorful expanse
of uncertain futures and Colorado sky.
The dog will die in six years
and what then?
How many years will they spend
walking away
and how many times will they return?
Dirt will collect beneath their heals
and there will be other dogs.
A child strapped to ones’s back
and another running along beside
with scraped knees
and an open heart.
The same brand of tobacco
burning between their fingers
and miles of river to be re-explored.

It’s quiet in the mud season.
Off season travelors dine around the six-sided fireplace
discussing this week’s school shooting
and celebrating anniversaries, 40th birhdays.
Their burgers are sometimes overcooked and their wine is overpriced, but
they are happy.
They are far enough away
from the heartbreak of Monday
and imaginary deadlines
and close enough to the pasture
to feel the steam of the horses’ breath
in their outstretched hands.
One compliments my dress
and I touch my belly instinctively.
Her smile reminds me of my mother’s.

A thunder storm rolled through the valley
not too long ago.
I couldn’t remember the last time I heard thunder.
I stood outside in the rain
and closed my eyes
and felt myself getting smaller
with each flash of lightening
as if I were going back in time,
until Drew told me to come inside.

I laughed as he pulled me through the door
and kissed him deeply on the mouth
until he was laughing too, and wet,
and we made love before I had to go to the restaurant
and I felt our baby move for the first time.
As I walked to my car through the mist,
nostalgia found its way into my pores.
All that dampness in the air.

I delight in the way you hold me
my dear
and the way you make me laugh,
better than any drug.
And the surface of your skin,
nothing has ever felt so smooth.
Banalities seem not so banal
through the kaleidoscope lens of our love.
We shop for groceries
like pirates searching for treasure.
It's our secret
and no cannon can penetrate the planks
of our ship.

But I have loved others before
and may love another again.
For even ships are subject to decay
with the changing of the tides.
And my heart has many chambers.