as all newborns, something fragile, his limbs skitter, every movement as if stretching endlessly, muscle-stutter, his fingers grip imaginary angels by their feathertips, his mouth yawns, his head wobbles from side to side, looking-feeling, out of hunger, out of comfort-yearning, swaddled in new clothes, alien material this cotton, nothing like the womb, the freefall and cushion of warm liquid, but he has yet to cry out, we don’t let him, hovering over the playpen, the bassinet, the crib, like guardian giants tending to a lost lamb.

how
do
you stop
this
maw
of
the past
&
threat
of
the future

bringing one child into the world is dangerous enough
how to pass the navigational skills you’ve acquired
to recognize the sign posts of disaster and the edges of cliffs
and keep secret from them the disappointments you’ve collected
but two, to bring another, after you already feel that you’ve failed
as if by stacking the burden you can somehow break the tension
of another life you cannot hold gently in your hands

and i’d like to be believe that the ache in my breath is from all these cigarettes
not something i’ve passed to my daughter or son
the spinning of something out of nothing and seeing ghosts in the wind
where the sun collapses over the pressure of bloating
some festering that has always been my own
not a wound but pus that demands rupture exactly
the prying open of skin that does not know how to heal
the cessation of a street when it turns on a bend
as if sorrow traveled exclusively in the blood
pitching stakes in ground yet unclaimed

in a matter of days have gone from a cig or two
to polishing a pack
old habits resurfacing and hopefully won’t be hard to kill
she says, “our son will be breathing this, this smoke off your skin”
and what do i say to that
having already bruised him in the womb