Anemone Beaulier: “Nothing Like”
NOTHING LIKE
I try to think you a baby, but you’ve been only
symptoms: fatigue, tender breasts, vomiting.
An illness, an end—not a beginning.
And though your tail’s gone this week,
gone the webbing between your toes,
though you’ve eyelids now, so your eyes appear closed—
during the sonogram, you look like almost
nothing—gray crescent in blackness—nothing
like a baby. Then: a beat,
steady on, as all hearts speak.
Anemone Beaulier has had poetry published in Briar Cliff Review, Cimarron Review, Main Street Rag, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Salamander, Southern Review, and elsewhere.