Rachael Lynn Nevins

WHERE DO WE COME FROM, WHERE ARE WE GOING?

And who is this I who knows
how to let you grow? I can’t even say
what I’m doing with my life, except
in the most specific sense: eating salty cheese
with salty crackers and writing in a notebook.
At the kitchen table. By the light of a single lamp.
Listening to the refrigerator hum.
Watching the windows go dark. Waiting
for my husband to call or return
home. Meanwhile, two hearts go on beating
inside me. I have no idea how. Nor how
the second one, your pea-sized heart
beating in the deepest recess of my belly,
came to be. Nor your tiny fingers and toes,
nor your eyes, not yet opened.