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.