My sister painted a picture
of the dead fetus she lost,
at the bottom of our toilet.
Every time I flush, I think
about how hard it must have been
for her to.
I met him in that painting
and he already knew me.
He’d heard my voice singing show tunes in the car,
tasted the sugar in my key lime pie,
and now his porcelain tombstone is in the blue bathroom.
He grew in the darkness of her womb
like a sunflower seed buried deep in the ground.
He was cradled in nourishing fluid, wet soil-
until breaking ground into the light
into a world of people, already grown.
But when babies stop growing,
people already grown-
have to grow a little more.