wanting baby

prose poem

A fist becomes a stretched hand. Tiny fingers spread, in a motion that says, hello. I look into the pram and wave back. In these visions of me wanting baby, there is no man at my side. My inability to let go of vanity means that I won’t be with baby, or at the very least, birth it. I see myself with it swaddled into my neck, waiting by the door for some company, sticky and tired but very much in love. When the child runs behind the desk at work, he raises his arms upwards at me, an invitation to hold. He wraps himself around my waist and I have no other option other to submit. Or, the child steadies themselves, new to standing, by placing one hand on my thigh as I proceed to read to them. Their mother smiles, scrolls on her phone. Will you hate me when you’re thirteen? I think I’ll let you. I almost left the key in the front door again last night so I can never promise safety. you will grow and become tall and scary to someone. Elsewhere, I buy the cigarettes for the kids outside the corner shop because they look kind of cool and they intimidate me with their nonchalance. Legs spread, sprawled on top of each other in an act we keep saying that we won’t do with one another anymore. Your proximity can suffocate me at times. I didn’t mean what I said two minutes ago, of course, it’s a kink. Holding my bloated stomach for way too long first thing in the morning. Crystalline, Fossora, Mycelia. You say them against your tongue again and again like a chant. In another world, these are daughters waiting at the school gate to be picked up. But here, they’re just names