1. to Theodore

This is the heaviest love. The physical heft-I hauled us, heavier by the day for close to a year, wantonly begrudging. I’m sorry. I only wanted to hold you on the outside. I wanted you to be real. I wanted you. This love is heavy with the weight of fear. I wanted my boys to be safe, I wanted my boys. I did not want to cross this threshold that feels like the poles reversing. The continents are in place, the earth is following its ellipse but the very magnetism that holds us together has flipped. A looking-glass world. Some people are born into that world. We have words “resilience” and “hardiness” when they thrive, despite all odds. Odds and eggs, I think. Odds I beat for so long. My tragedy, our tragedy, had .6% odds. I am six of a thousand, half dozen of another. Eggs, I once thought of as life in your pocket. What spill can crack that shell, what luck insulates it? Your little egg, your cocoon we made together was the fragile kind. Some crack, some secret fissure, put us into the wrong side of the normal curve. The bad odds. The threshold crossed. And where are you? Did you cross a threshold too? Are you safe, are you warm, do you need a hat-a mother’s worries. The heaviness remains despite the emptiness. My womb is involuting, returning to its normal size. My grief is a gas filling potential spaces. I would have loved you. I do love you. I would have loved to have loved you.