1763 c/o Amy Key

Baby, wait a lifetime before you love somebody

Winter is the flat stone
I tried to skim across a lake
that fell hard on the water.
I haven’t the heart
to try again with another.

Today I woke wishing for a baby.
I woke thinking — next year I will be married.
Strange since I don’t have a fetish for such things.
Oat-coloured hydrangeas are comforting
in the face of such thoughts;
like the ones I had about a girl
someone I liked brought to my party.

I lay awake wondering about the baby.
The baby’s hands.
The baby’s toes.
The baby’s inverted dummy mouth.
I held the baby in the deep sea of my lungs;
I thought — stay with me baby.

Starlight tastes less like snow than you might think
and I woke with a temporary sense of what love is,
like getting away with a good lie
(I put this down to the cat in my arms).

I am watching my breath mist up the windows
thinking — I made this.