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. 

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“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