From the western most window
a cosmic buzzing bleeds through. 
August air, thick as silence, coats our

tongues. Satellite like a salamander in outer
space waggles fervently, chasing her own tail. 
Meanwhile Universe, that crumbly saltine cracker 
is night-air-stale and nothing but blackness 
save for tiny perforations becoming 
tomorrow. 

I listen close. A buzzing grows in urgency,
threatening to abandon homogeneity with a throb, 
off kilter, that can only mean falling. 
Falling, but also a denial of falling—
clinging to the cosmos— an
incessant thrusting.

Satellite digs her heals like a top spinning 
to one side, knocking her head on the floor
in a silent prayer to be upright. 

By the time we are outside, 
she’s spun out of orbit and, reaching 
for herself, falls for the lake like the crest

of a wave when it breaks…
                        

There he is vroom vrooming his wheely toys
on the carpet, on my arm, my knee, my forehead.

Baby baby, he says, daddy daddy, mommy mommy!
And then, outside, outside, outside, which is always

a question. Eleven months is around the time for other
questions to come needling their noses up too… like,

isn’t it about time he had a sibling? Never mind the price
my body paid, that some wounds actually don’t heal with 

time, or that he is perfect. Like this. When the summer 
sun catches one sky blue eye through a dusty window,

he looks them at me, locking his ocean on my 
evergreen and he sparkles. No, I think, 

he is enough.