Production
Jennifer Blair
I hear girls are born with all the hearts they’ll ever
have sewn inside their arms and legs. Candy hearts,
the quaint powdery kind that leave those little trails
of slug-soot on children’s desks during Valentine’s
Day parties. They say you can’t stop being born with
them and you can’t ever control which ones will
arrive in your palm to give at the crucial moment.
A lavendar URGR8 to the woman with bad breath
who helped me open my checking account, orange
NICE to my friend with the cracked front tooth
and today in the brick building waiting room
full of rumpled magazines over two years old,
when my name is finally called and I grab my
purse to get up, a mint green SWEET BABY
falls right into the overstuffed chair where
I’ve been sitting, sweet little baby taking its
first tentative chubby steps in my cells,
dropping a dark yellow rattle, screeching.
Follow me the nurse with the broken blood vessel
in her right eye smiles, my tan chart in her hand.
When she apologizes again for how she must look,
I smile and tell her it’s nothing. Skin drenched in
cold paper gown sweat, I still think that love is best.
