TOWARD COTÊ-VERTU: ON ABORTION

By Joshua Benjamen

(i)

late twenties hovering over a rayon tablecloth
its unsettling vacancy wandering thoughts at a crawl
blanching the quietude, from within which i can recollect
the brown-haired boy that has decided he enjoys
boy-dom enough to embrace it, paints his sleeves with it
wipes off half his dinner with it, who makes tails to his
sibling, who wouldn’t dare function inside of a binary
that makes no sense, whose bent for art is, by eight,
so exceptional that i find myself constantly exclaiming
how struck by their passion i am, parroting clichés
about the potential and purity of an unmarred childhood
over wine with a neighbour—soon to be divorced—
whose decline manifests in hearing less than one might wish,
my own conjugal grievances necessarily understated

(ii)

but it’s for the best and i don’t think i mind much because
i’m distracted, my mouth halfway agape with the name
i gave him, the matted-brown hair i passed onto him hanging
over his face, while he lurches back on two legs and a full stomach
                               eeeeeeeerrrrrrccchcchhhhhh;
the crack of the first chair slid back erupts from the rayon,
a rallying call that begets a cavalry charge toward
an earnest definition of freedom radiating out of fresh asphalt,
pane glass windows palpitate from the carefree blast of
unaccustomed hands slamming the front door which in turn
severs their stampede trailing’s burying a half-made directive
and a halcyon inhalation emerging out of new-found silence
a happening in between the post-cacophony of children being
frustratingly loud and the smell of a bedside novel at ten p.m.
vibrating from the belly, i welcome sundries of clay casualties
while their gleeful screams pour in through the kitchen window

(iii)

i set into a sudsy wallflowering, daydreaming, and the occasional
“oh of course” “no don’t get up, i’m just about done” to the
off-duty carers comfortably chattering amongst themselves while
over the back half of dinner’s labour my fingertips become
pruned with maps of future nostalgia, the deep ridges
i trace out with my thumbs lend me a smile, on loan for i know
how long, curious of who they will have shared it with at their
own table before returning to mine, to this moment, with a sigh.
i run my thumbs routinely, once more over but without friction
these smooth surfaces surprise me, as if feeling one’s own spine
this is not even my dream; my upholstered shoulders hunched over
a sun-bleached tablecloth waiting for a hand of twenty-nine
that was never coming, nor wanted, but still i find myself wondering
where are my children?