Loop (in Dirt and Gold)
I sold the necklace, my name written in gold.
I wanted a baby. The doctors fed me lies,
Clomid, and unicorns. I sold the necklace
my father gifted me, a gold memento,
its blood-filled cost. I was finished with him,
ten years dead. I wanted a baby. The doctors
bled me—needle needle needle—until
I was more wound than skin. Pincushion blue,
skeleton ache, zombie of want for the child
who would not wake. I was a child for my father
who left me again and again, who wanted and then
did not. I failed the gods, their nullifying tests,
and wanted to be dead like the child I lost,
buried deep in the earth, a crumb of gold.
Source: Poetry (April 2021)