The little redhead is pregnant.

Her test kit results 

all over instagram with

shoplifted baby clothes.

She dances 

like a cheerleader for 

a home run 

& my head the ball crushed 

against a wall.  

Our boy smiles when I ask, 

It‘s true?

What rays from his eyes is 

his quick beating heart,

this careless joy. 

But I smother my voice 

so not to 

frighten him into silence.

I approach 

as I would a fawn in a trap 

so he will not dart 

but keep on talking.

You are only 15.

He says he’ll leave school, 

find work for his hands which still look small, 

but nails bitten down, 

clutching his phone where she waits, 

as if that phone were all that keeps his blood flowing.  

And a feeling comes over me, as if 

he had just set fire to every one of his childhood photos; 

the past seeming 

now a myth—our boy 

a soul possessed. 

A new incarnation 

has introduced himself.