My Son Says That on His Birthday He Will Get Up Early
to be awake at the exact minute he was born
because there could be a time warp—
and of course he would step through it, the tremulous
bubble or ring of light, or the mist obscuring
his curated display of stuffed bunnies and bears,
the print of a sailboat racing from harbor;
even though he is afraid of attic robbers scuttling
afraid of spiders and the prospect of falling
in love, fearless he would slip back into the seconds before
we knew his name or his face or his heart’s glissando trill
against our skin, before we knew not to panic, or how
to hide it, he would smell antiseptic and sweat and blood,
overhear the frantic monitors and the nurse’s count of sponges
cheerily, with every confidence of his safe return
to this house where the irises again forgot to bloom
where this careless summer he will fall asleep
one afternoon in my arms, for the last time, probably—
When you were born I was cut open, I say.
I know. Then I could see your heart.
because there could be a time warp—
and of course he would step through it, the tremulous
bubble or ring of light, or the mist obscuring
his curated display of stuffed bunnies and bears,
the print of a sailboat racing from harbor;
even though he is afraid of attic robbers scuttling
afraid of spiders and the prospect of falling
in love, fearless he would slip back into the seconds before
we knew his name or his face or his heart’s glissando trill
against our skin, before we knew not to panic, or how
to hide it, he would smell antiseptic and sweat and blood,
overhear the frantic monitors and the nurse’s count of sponges
cheerily, with every confidence of his safe return
to this house where the irises again forgot to bloom
where this careless summer he will fall asleep
one afternoon in my arms, for the last time, probably—
When you were born I was cut open, I say.
I know. Then I could see your heart.
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Oliver
Carolyn Oliver is the author of Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, forthcoming 2022), selected by Matthew Olzmann for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize. Oliver’s poems appear in The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Radar Poetry, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, Cherry Tree, Plume, DIALOGIST, and elsewhere. Oliver is the winner of the E. E. Cummings Prize from the NEPC, the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry. Oliver lives in Massachusetts with her family.