baby

no body has ever given birth

only a way to

push away from the awkwardness in this conversation

dull belly bending dumb into dusk

birch trees peeling from your nails

the birds outside singing in each office cubicle

until they are burnt by

the fire fifty years from now

drowned in the flood 102 years from then

ripped with the jaws of a dog dead on each road that

will kill the deer pick up the stranger warn the woods

of all that it is armed with

buds that are cities

friends that will break them down

an august that brandishes all into a calendar at every month

found in your nails again flipping off

the mummified silence the moldy quiet

what they will one day call muscle memory though most of it is fat

with prose still in the streets

and every book remaining unyolked

there in that brainy pelvic floor

like rice left to sour in a bowl

pulling this time

against the golden hour

borne

boy oh boy

what have you done

to this girl