I dreamt I didn’t have a baby.

Pregnant, the baby always dies,

or I am just sterile.

 

I decide to bury the dream

no one else needs to know

Jotted on a slip of paper

folded it in half and half again.

 

Tucked in a book,

the slip wormed through the pages

Buried at the base of a tree

The relapsed reverie sprouted

through the soil.

 

Someone picked the sprig and

The dream turned into a black moth

Come back to bang against

The pane of my consciousness.

 

I caught the winged thing in a net

Pressed it into a palimpsest

Then placed it in my pocket

 

A piece of lint must have

Inseminated it

Used its slippery tongue

to implant into my pocket lining.

 

The embryo forgotten for a time

But even the expecting pocket

Miscarried, the fetus

fallen to the floor of a grocery store

Assuming the shape of a silverfish

Skittered out over the linoleum

I picked it up and shoved it

To the bottom of my purse.

 

One day I knew the bag needed cleaning

Among the stray receipts and hand sanitizer

I found a form that had finally come to term

It was inevitable, discovering it, again

The thing I wanted most.

Do not unfold it.

Do not erase its scribbled face.

Stay teetering, on the brink of tossing it out,

or thrusting the memoir back to the bottom of my bag.