I pray for comfort.  

You are there.  

You can't deny that while I clutch my rosary beads

your tree limbs tap my window panes.  

Your cool breath inflates my heart.  

I fall into a dreamy sleep

of lives I haven't lived

and some I still could.

Your green leaves eagerly await my next move.  

I make an appointment at the clinic. 

I pray for you to leave.  

I'm not ready.  

I've loved you my whole life

writing names in my diary, boy names and girl names

knowing you are a girl.

Packing away barbies,

saving them for you.  

But I'm not myself yet

so how can you be you?

Your mouth fills with words I place on your tongue.  

Tree limbs stretch

scribbling your songs on the sky.  

How to describe the smell of fat rain drops

splashing on parched stone?  

That is you.  

In my childhood, there was a giant doll 

standing in a neighbor's window--

the neighbor whose little girl was taken

from the park

leaving behind that doll.  

Her mother placed it in the window--

its arms reaching out as far back as I can remember.  

I love you.  

I love your father too.  

Go back to where you come from--

you won't miss anything here.

Please come back another time.  

I'll be waiting.  

Please.

Bitterness dissolves on my tongue like a thin wafer

leaving only want. 

The day before my appointment

I sit on the toilet.

My prayers are answered.  

You swoop from my womb into the clouds

squealing with laughter.  

Then fall back down beneath the black soil

never seen.

In nightmares

a twisted creature writhes it's way from between my legs

riding on a bloody waterfall.  

But that is not real. 

Mourning seems silly.  

Instead, for days I fill my mouth

with dark, moist cake.  

It is like filling my mouth and ears and eyes

with soft sweet baby flesh.

Or pressing myself deep into the cool crumbly earth

and finding god.

I wait for you to come back.  

I live

and I wait.