I remember
What color the starts were
When I first met him.
Daylight is now grey
The color of the sky is muted.
His hands, mouth
The color of cigarette smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I know he’ll look just like you.”
His eyes mudpools,
Just like the ones my mother used to tell me
My nightmares came up from.
She hangs laundry on the line.
Mudpools.
I imagined the baby growing inside me.
Breaking out of one of the coconut husks from the
Palm trees that grew beneath our terrace.
We were sitting at the plastic, white, stained,
Set of patio furniture that mother spills her wine on, and
My brother stains with paint.
I watch the mudpools widen as he puts out his cigarette on the edge of the plastic,
Searing a perfect
Circle.
I trace my finger on the flower shape,
Cut out in the back of his chair.
Seagulls sing to him in the morning.
I hear hymns in the sea gulls cries,
And I am brought back to when I was a child,
And I watched a woman in church singing praises while she
Held her swollen belly.
Life spilling out of her.
I drowned in mudpools.