Where do they go next?

 

My friends are not on my side. 

They scold like old nuns—as if I 

could make this little Catholic girl 

do what I want her to do —

she a child too and someone else‘s—

but to our boy-child I do suggest 

that he suggest 

the A-word:

And then her sobs 

make his phone rock in his hand. 

That sound of a wounded dog yelping 

brings back our sweet Lab’s cry 

when this boy drove his bike over her paw.  

That too was by accident. 

He stares at the floor while his red-headed girl 

begs me to tell him—our love—

               yes, our—he‘s my love too!—

„Dont ask me to kill our baby!“

But I tell him something else: 

This is not their baby 

but a clump of unformed matter 

as incomplete 

as a box of Betty Crocker cake mix. 

His face tells me he is weak and torn, 

digging down into the bottom of himself. 

The rhetorics of baking and killing 

jostle in his eyes.  

Betty and Baby.   

And so It will be her crying without shame 

            and, perhaps, the prodding 

            of her pretty three-inch nails 

that will decide where 

they go next.