She will live inside me for three more months. Of this
I am certain: we are running on time. We are
progressing at the recommended rate. But she is still
so small, not even two pounds, and she lies completely
connected. There are days when I want to fill
her room with flowers and others when I want
destruction, and I wonder what she thinks, if she can
hear me. It’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins—
the femur, the head, the slow skin. Sometimes,
I think her heartbeat is mine, that the rumble
of hunger is somehow split in two: the louder
and then the smaller, the echo. An agreement that runs
through me like a tectonic plate: we are hungry, we will sleep.