I wake at dawn to glimpse my barren chest and speak to the children I won’t birth.
My two delicate hums.
My pair of soft assemblies.
My want is a canary rattling the morning’s thin frame,
the steady breath of droplets following months of bad weather,
two small plates dismembered on the hardwood.
Despite evidence, I think love should indent the self in some way.
My breasts, the swollen lunch of mosquitos.
Sometimes,
the crave is too much for one body.
I take my woman pills with an apathetic edge because I’m brutally aware
of what they won’t fix.
My imagined daughter. My imagined son.
Please forgive my circumstance.
Copyright © 2024 by Spencer Williams. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 29, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem after meeting my friend’s beautiful and perfect baby for the first time. Later that evening, I got a little (a lot) wine-drunk at a bar and started rambling about how badly I wanted kids of my own someday. While my companion was in the bathroom, I messily scrawled the third stanza of this poem on a bar napkin and later found it crumpled in my pocket while doing laundry days later. I decided to finish the poem sober!”
—Spencer Williams
Spencer Williams
Spencer Williams is a Mexican trans poet from Chula Vista, California. She is the author of TRANZ (Four Way Books, 2024).