The man who scored a hat-trick
is having a baby. OK, he’s not,
his girlfriend is. A baby.
They’re all having babies.
A twenty inch squirm
swaddled by a blanket,
eyes like marbles. All having them.
It seems so. Either that
or they’re getting married.
The biggest day of big days, apparently.
Soon there will be invites. Maybe.
Showing off the calligraphy.
I can picture it,
a suit creased once, a glass of fizz
as a stranger takes photos
to be tucked inside albums
I’ll never take a look at.
Those I’ve known know others now.
They are settling into a life
that writes itself, like a book
never moved from its place
on the shelf. There will be
a triangle of kids kissing
before you ever did,
hands fumbling as if the other person
is a button, noses bumping.
There will be a house
with a dishwasher and pictures
on the walls from the honeymoon
in Greece you didn’t know about
- perhaps don’t care.
Soon you and they will be thirty
and forty and fifty
and their squirm will grow
before you’ve even blinked
or had time to toast the bread.
Some already have.
The hat-trick man is smiling.
I should proffer congratulations,
type out ‘bundle of joy’
at the pencil-esque ultrasound,
the shapes that will become human.
We’re the same age, miles apart.
They’re all at it, it seems.
The girlfriends that is. Having babies.