she sits on a rock

by the lake

by the tree

she who is she

who used to be me

He has passed out drunk in his brother’s bedroom and O I have come stealthy to that bed, invisible as his family murmurs of  other things, and placed his inert arm over me in mock love while our baby kicked in my taut stomach, his father unaware of a moment I still cherish, forever wrapped in that dead arm, indifference pooled like blood around my heart as though to drown.

remember the sounds
the noise and the after
the voices are raising
in cruel careful laughter