The Poem I Can’t Write

Because while we’re trying to get pregnant,
we do not, and so the painting in the museum

did not prophesy conception. In it, two
whale sharks swim, mouths open in a mantle

of squid, catching as many as they can,
and the water meets the night sky, full moon

illuminating the earth straight through
to the ocean floor. When we passed it,

I felt such certainty. Months before,
you’d looked at me in a sweaty bar downtown

and reminded me we’d be lousy parents,
I was out of work and renting rooms

from whatever friend would let me, and you
didn’t own any furniture, you slept on an air

mattress and kept your most important books
and notes in piles in the corners of your studio.

But it doesn’t work when I try this way
to convince myself that it’s for the best,

I still feel the empty crescent where inside me
should be full, I read the world for its clues,

the painting calling to me like a tarot card,
like the Empress. I planned to remember

the painting, and write in all the vivid colors
in my head about how those submerged

wide-mouths predicted a baby that day,
and while I waited I too was under water,

without breath, learning to let go of gravity,
of stories I won’t tell.