To A Fetus

I did not bear you to be my undoing
(against all my grandmother's wishes).
You are here now. But one day you will go.
You will know your own joys, your own sorrows.
You will not walk my autumn,
and my summer will not call to you.
(To think you might sing someone else's song—
such hopes are delusions, mere wind.)
I cannot keep you folded in my palm—
that small, safe place where I am always at rest.
So you will squander your youth,
and I will despise myself forever after.
You are a bird! How can I hold you?!
I can only offer you wings.
Sometimes you return to me with them folded,
so that I might draw the blade from your back...