“Don’t use the funnies for your painting. I want to clip them out later.”

“Can you imagine that girl didn’t know she was pregnant?”

“Do you think I could be pregnant and not know it?”

“Do you think you could be pregnant and not know it?”

I thought the answer was no.
But here i am, brush loaded with paint.
So hungry.
So bloated.
So pained.

All these years you’ve been gone,
Your clipped funnies fading in their album,
And still my belly grows
With the dreams planted.

Are these the labor pains
To awaken me from my engorged ignorance?
In my heedless pursuits,
Wiping my brushes first on business,
Then on obituaries,
Have I built a child
Or a bubble of gas?