Stop setting me alight with that look on your face.

Please just leave me alone.

I’ll come back later.
You have no idea

How I collapse into madness,

How my marrow melts and evaporates,

And how a tempest forms in my mind

When my breasts become stiff and ache.

You can’t read me through and through. You are just a man.

You don’t know all about mothers. You are just a father.

Don’t worry; I’ll come back later.
His scent wafted from my uterus to the end of the universe.

His music traveled from his first breath to my last.

All my dreams were about him.

And he was a beacon of hope.

Now the farmland of my future, like my uterus, is desolate.
What kind of sound did the life I strummed like a guitar make?

What kind of mineral crushed my fetus—my flesh and blood?

The destiny with my name on it is a wasteland.

I have gone mad. I need answers to all these questions.
When I want to scream until my soul shatters

Or when all the veins in my body burst and weep,

I will gently rock the cradle that I made for him.

Or I will push his teal blue pram alone.

I will hum some lullabies.

I also have a pair of pink socks I have to finish knitting.

I will recite Homer’s Greek myths.

And I will draw the picture of his newly sprouted incisors

That I never had a chance to soothe.
Son, I watched every centimeter of your growth.

I watched with delight.

I could build a whole new world with traces of your existence.

I…I…Oh, I…

Don’t worry; I’ll come back later.