Colleen Abel
I recognize this choosing feeling.
It’s like
giving up a baby, leaving it
in the farthest suburb of this city, swaddled on steps
of the fire department or in the foyer of St. Xavier’s Hospital.
It feels that alive.
Certainly, I’m giving up its first moments,
its origin, its attendants.
I give up the first twitchy movements,
the toys, the tears. I’ll give up its cradle, certainly.
I give up the before-birth, too, the doula
and the doctor,
surrender its piecemeal composition. And I give up
the cells it’s made of:
air-light, molecular, sticky.
And then fifteen years later, I go back to the farthest suburb
to the split-level with the swingset in back,
neatly kept and humble, with the neighbors holding
down their blinds with one finger
watching the car that’s idling on their street.
And I would ring the strange doorbell and the window
in the door would become a mirror
with the baby’s face / girl’s face and mine looking
back at me
and I will let go of the desire to know, nobody
will have an idea
how little effort it takes to relinquish any life.