I’ve always been a sucker for fate.
In love with the idea that the universe
has tied it's strings into knots with me in mind,
but forever skeptical of
anything that I couldn’t confirm.
How I ended up in front of a woman and her tarot cards is beyond me.

Between us is only a table,
The length of which makes a few feet feel like miles.
Distance is a funny concept,
Close enough to smell her perfume,
yet I feel
It would take an eternity for my hand to reach hers.  

When the card between her fingertips whispers to her
the potential I have in being a mother,
I want to leave.

It reminds me of when
My boyfriend tells me he can’t wait for the day  
That our magic comes together to create something worth stretching for.
The conversation leaves me with nightmares where I am alone and full with something that doesn’t quite feel like mine
And I leave him a week later.

All I’m doing is skipping the inevitable conversation
About the things I won’t give him.
Because between him and the woman in front of me,
I don’t know how to tell them that
motherhood is not something I expect within my deck.
Motherhood is a foreign concept that wakes me up each morning sicker than the last.
Purging myself of dreams of small fingers wrapped around my own.

I don’t know which combination of words
wraps the disappointment in pretty paper
And gives it over like a gift in the hands of my future love,
Allowing him to tear away at the layers until all that’s left
Is the box that I have stuffed this ugly truth into.

I have a list of names
Pressed into a book like flower petals that have been dry for far too long.
Like maybe some things are still beautiful after death,
Until they turn to dust.
Like maybe one day I will bring into the world
a child whose face fits these syllables,
Or maybe they’ll turn to dust.

See I like kids
And when people tell me that I will change my mind,
I tell them maybe.

Someone once told me that I was “denying nature”,
But it feels more like nature has denied me.