Cribs, diapers, bottles and onesies, changing tables, tiny socks and Vaseline.

In September, we decide we aren't going to wait anymore. We are tired of expecting a miracle of money to come along and insure that we can handle caring for a creature we've made. Stability is imaginary anyway. And things bought often break or soon stand in closet shadows wearing fuzzy sheets of dust. It's the night of our 5-year-wedding anniversary. We sit on a steep grassy slope watching the sun plunge beneath the Earth. We are smiling at the other's smile. Now? We really mean now? It is the first time we can agree on when to mark this dash of our timeline. Yes we want a baby now. 

Two months later, we conceive. I don't know it until December, but I have a zygote and it is dividing its cells inside me. Later, an embryonic secret begs for Saltines, stretchy pants, winged sweaters and afternoon naps. We tell our families because we need them to know. If I lose it, I need them. If I can keep it, I need them. I have no secrets from those I love who ask me questions. After 31 years of living, this is something I've learned.  

I am forming a four month old fetus now. The fluttering, I think, has begun. I look at pictures on the Internet to see if I am fat compared to strangers who post pictures of their bare bellies with cutesy signs stating food cravings, discomforts and current countdowns. I take no pictures, but stare at the slopes of my extending curves like a toddler marvels at a large sticky snot plucked from the depths of his nostril. My nurse midwife says if I "look more pregnant at night" that probably just means I'm bloated. I look at scientific drawings of my crowded insides and they fail to convince me that my organs are there, let alone a budding babe. I have strange dreams and financial fears, but I take my prenatal pills and laugh a lot. Somehow this future I'm forming within my brilliantly evolved -and yes, often bloated- body gathers joy closer to me. I hardly have to reach for it now. And aside from avoiding extremely strenuous exercise, I feel powerful. I am building a tiny person after all. 

We don't have a crib. I don't know that we'll ever have one. We are hoping to have our baby sleep beside us. Milk when he needs it. A touch when she calls for it. Unconventional in this country, often criticized and teased, but something we hope to try nonetheless. We're busy and broke and getting most of our child rearing supplies from my in-laws, who have one child and a house with old baby things in the basement. I am happy for these hammy downs. I don't want to be the mother who thinks she needs every gadget made by capitalism's elephant patterned cuteness. We wouldn't have a place for it all anyway. We live in a one-bedroom apartment: he, me, and our brown silly doggy. We don't have that little house we thought we're supposed to have, but we don't mind. We're happy here.   

The Square of Sunlight

While I wait for the yeast to foam and the butter to melt, I stand in a square of sunlight. This winter has been like a monster with low self-esteem, bullying us into buildings and battering the trees. All twenty-five of the degrees today feel like secret messages from Spring. Soon, she says, soon. Tomorrow is March 1st. This old house has cold spots on the floors and a window in the bathroom that invites the winter wind to enter and chill our porcelain throne. So I stand in the center of the sun's affections, flushing away my bleak complexion, while the dog watches. I don't want to be a wife who festers and pesters about money. I vacuum, water the plants and wash the dishes. I eat left overs and a cabbage salad that tires my jaw. Later, I follow snowmobile tracks over hills, into farms and past the frozen river with the wet blue edges. Penny and I think we smell something stinky and I am fairly certain those prints are too big to be from another dog. She pulls and I let her, turning my neck and reaching my eyes around the hood of my coat. From far away, I hope to see a bear. I've never seen a wild one and I'd like to. 

Juno's Birds

The wicked wind makes ghosts of the snow, while the fat fearless song birds flutter the floor beneath the feeders. I pull the beige accordion shades down low to let a little light in, and to entertain us, the sniffling husband, the sleepy wife and the restless, playful dog. We, the average citizens, are banned from driving, told to hide from Juno and her Roman goddess wrath. And it makes me wonder, has there ever been a hurricane Hitler? Or a blizzard called the Ku Klux Klan? Sometimes I think we want to forget the horrors of humanity so badly that we pretend everything is better now. I call myself a poor white woman. I am not oppressed, just an artist who feels guilty for the little load life has strapped to the bones of my back. Just look at those brave little birds. Aren't they afraid they'll lose their holes in the maple tree? Perhaps they risk it for seeds and socialization. If we went out for a chat, they'd just fly away. I watch the bush branches waver, while bird feet cling. They look like newscasters standing on a dock while horrendous waves rise up behind them, splashing their yellow slicker hoods and the plastic covers on their camera lenses. A metaphore lost on their ignorant bird brains. I embrace the uncertainty of winter storms, of this submission into soft pajamas and seclusion. 

Says the Shirt

I do not have his big brown eyes, but these little blue buttons. I have no beard, dark rimmed glasses or laughter, just this triangular collar and gray stitching. I am not made of hair, freckles and skin, but soft long sleeves and plaid pocketed cotton. He breathes, while I can only flap in the wind. He speaks while my only expression depends on if he folds my cuffs or not. But we are both washable, dependable, warm and comforting. Yet, one day, he might become ill and die, while I'll just tatter before I am bagged and donated. You know, though, whenever he leaves, his things will be your only graspable memory. 

The Lonely Day

Suddenly the sun is sunk. I put on my boots, coat, mittens and leash the dog. I do not take light and so we meander at the end of the driveway before returning inside.

I should go to the movies. What's playing? I take off my polka dot pajama pants, my stained sweatshirt and inside-out tee. I pull on my jeans, zip and button and put on a clean shirt.  I slip into my new shoes. The ones my godmother mailed me. 

Now it's forty-five minutes before the movie. Wait-a-minute. I've been worrying about money all day and I go to a movie? That's illogical. But I really should see people. I've been alone all day. Eh. A screen is a screen and this little one won't cost me $10 to stare at, I decide, untying my shoes, pulling down my jeans and sliding back into the static cling of soft cotton. I might be going crazy with loneliness. I sing with my guitar for a few minutes, my voice like a small fire, but my fingers like brittle kindling. The singing makes me feel less lonesome. A thought which causes me to compare myself to a lost old lady consoled by her own nonsensical chatter. Bagel with cream cheese, clementines, one soft boiled egg. I put on a movie. It turns out to be horribly depressing. I quit an hour in. I turn on an episode of a television series I enjoy about midwives in London's East End during the 1950s, but a main character nearly dies during childbirth and by the end I am sobbing like a bloodied knee child. When the credits conclude, I turn off the t.v., stand and move from that nauseous sensation --the one provoked by too many hours sitting still.  

I need to be outside. 

I push my bare feet back into my boots, zip up my nylon navy coat, leash the dog, and grab the wool mittens my grandmother made and mailed me. I stretch the head lamp around my hat, double clicking both bulbs. 

On the path beside the river, we run. We don't go so far as the woods because I'm frightened of the psychopaths of horror films and newspapers, as well as hibernating mother bears. We turn back. When we reach the commons, a grassy horseshoe surrounded by gray road, I bend over and flash the dull light over the patch of frozen ground beneath me. Then I snap up my hood, click off the lights and lay down. I look up, out, while Penny rolls in circles around me in spasms of ecstatic back scratching. The moon glows. God's headlamp. Star dots speckle from brilliant to dull uncountable clusters. I imagine a world where the air is too contaminated to breathe. Stuck beneath glass roofed communities where the only precipitation flows from hoses, sprinkler systems and cement fountains. If one day I cannot lay on the Earth's cold floor and inhale winter air, I'd rather not live. 

The last of the Wild

I watch geese flap into a bouncing line then fade into black dots behind the edge of the horizon. I delight in the dance of the clouds. I gently mirror the rhythm of the water as it carries tree debris down river. I feel the wind and watch while it bullies the grass, puppets the leaves and seduces strands from beneath my pinched metal hair pins.

I want land, but I can't afford to buy it from the government who pretends to own it with their taxes and town halls. Even if I could, I don't want to buy it, but borrow it like a library book, returning it after my proper turn. I would learn to cultivate a small piece of it, but mostly I'd just like to exist within it.  

I climb out of the car. I hear the cries of coyotes. Do they sing for the storm of snow drifts the forecasters have foretold? Do they yelp for a kill? Are they serenading the glow of our slivered cratered moon? I wait, my boots perched on frozen dirt, wondering if they are weeping at the industrial hum of man's machines. CRYING OUT to break the already shattered silence.

I pull the laces of my snow boots into tight bowed knots over my folded pants, then snap my long navy blue coat from my knees to my neck. I leash my wolf-mate, slip my fingers into my mismatched mittens and walk into the sideways snowy sleet. She dives for tiny rock caves and stick pile tunnels where critters might be hiding or hibernating, her snout wet and white, her eyes wild with an explorer's lust. We climb, crunch and then together we run. She is my sled dog, though I am without sled. She pulls and my feet become light and slick as wooden slats.

As I stand on the grass and look down river, I want to drink the pink wash sky -stretch wide my wet lips and gulp.