I am love, anger, envy sloshing around
In a wine glass I cannot have,
I am sleep deprived yoga panted at the grocery store
Backsliding into patriarchy with princess syndrome.
The coven meets without me at the Coffee Bean in early hours,
Sweatshirts covered in spit up. Brewing life, ravenlike.
Formula of breast, ripe as melon buoyant,
Battered bodies leaking life, leaking dreams.
You and I clot like blood, our punctured sleep
Like stars piercing a velvet night.
In my dream, I elope with you at my wedding
While six coyotes chase a cat down twenty first avenue.
The baby holds a cloud in each cheek,
Triggers hormones like electrification
“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is a lie
We do what we can, then get on planes to change diapers in hotel rooms.
The end of all this means daycare waitlists in a baby boom,
Means no more expanses of unfilled days,
No more baby skin against cheek warming
But cold bones preserved in air conditioned boardrooms,
Uncomfortable pants and bad lunches,
Racist performance reviews
To project manage my serrated feelings,
Torn twice on each side.
Prachi Kamble is an Indian Canadian writer living in the Pacific Northwest of Canada. She is currently in the second year of her MFA in fiction at NYU Paris. She has been published in Five South Journal and her work is forthcoming in the next Kundiman Pacific Northwest Zine.