stones

she sat and looked at me with something honest,

something brimming behind her eyes. pain more

or less, painful maybe, painless as she talked

about the miscarriage. i watched her eyes focus

on the sofa. they scanned across the chestnut leather,

like a floodlight in prison. maybe a name for the child,

maybe for the child itself. the child had a name—

she said it briefly, a whisper, a murmur. deafening

yet i didn't hear it and when i asked again she spoke

nothing. it had a name. names are given to children,

it was a child. she carried a child with a name.

her motherhood hung around like a bad cough,

between us like a cinder block wall, keeping me

away from her, keeping herself in. but she talked

just the same: about the child, about the months

she carried it inside herself. like some question

gaining momentum, month after month until it

spilled out of her stomach. after birth, the child

didn't give an answer because it had wasn't alive.

she carried an unanswered inquisition, for days

past nine months. asking, yearning, carried, deceased.

i sat like some pro-bono therapist carrying her burden,

problems. friends. her pushing people away and they

push her, a shoving match of relationships. she talked

about isolation and i pictured us drifting off, hunkered

at the safety of the leather couch. isolated on my fifteen

minute break with no escape so i nodded my head, dashing

concerned expressions. the wall between us grew, stacked

when she brought up her husband or ex-husband, an ex.

i sat and looked at my hands. counting the scars

and running my eyes along the deep lines that crossed

like railways across the skin. hands, like mine took out

their anger on the surfaces of her body. hands like mine

balled into fists, like he, the ex was clenching grenade.

i looked up to meet her eyes as i apologized for the hell

she paid but the wall was still there. a graffitied barrier

with each brick and each cinder block for each word

that came from her mouth. fifteen minutes to cover

a lifetime of pain. i don't get paid like a therapist, i didn't

get a degree like a therapist, i'm not in a therapist office

tacking down notes. breaking for fifteen minutes, i count

them as they drag by. my apron is covered in ground

coffeee and stuffed with invoices for groceries. she dives

into the worst period of her life and my feet ache. pulsing

under the arch up to the toes and this woman, carried

miscarried in college. i don't get paid like a therapist

because i'm not a therapist. i make her lemonade,

three lemons, ice, raw agave, water, silence.