when she tells him she’s pregnant and the night feels like plum jam that’s been sitting in the sun for too long,
he unwraps his thoughts from around her
and the coffee slips down their throats like a language that’s never been spoken
but that they both understand silently.
they’re serenaded into morning wakefulness by the cello suite they made love to last night,
before she turned away from his thrusting, impulsive body and crumpled into a sliver of concentration.
this is the home their boy will be raised in: a house where music
fills naked silences, a house where fingers play only on vertebrates, where eyes glance only at wrinkled scowls.
after she’s sucked all the sweet syrup of the fruit from her fingers
he hurls the jelly to the floor in an amorous italian rage and pushes her into the
shards of glass, heaving, his voice
hoarse with dreams: dreams of family (grunting) dreams of happiness dreams of dreams coming true dreams
that bring meaning into his life, the way notes give voice to a new sound, the way love feeds itself until it falls from the face of the earth,
too full to luxuriate in the world around it.
in the moments after she tells him she’s pregnant, the darkness feels
sultry, and sad. for breakfast she will spread that night on burnt toast
and crunch into it with hopes of forgetting.
