The Dictators' Guide to Good Housekeeping

Couplets: Layover

I drove out to meet her, parked the car, waited in the nave

between airport security and the wide hallway to the open air

and thought about how I'd joked with the doctor, that hopefully

I was as young inside as he said I looked outside, and he didn't smile.

She walked toward me and I remembered her reaction on the phone:

They'll show you horrible pictures! Only no one showed me any

and in two days I'd been swept clean, of promise and disaster.

She gripped me, hard, and said, I sat by the nicest Chinese

lady on the plane and told her all about your miscarriage, and something

inside me fell gracefully, I looked across the airport gallery,

the families and travelers, the guards and washed tiles, marveled

at the depth of fear, and I spoke the word, right there

in the airport, the word I'd done I said. And she said, Don't tell

my friends. And the thing that had fallen inside became unstrung,

bloodless, and I felt a fierceness rise I had never afforded myself.

I reached around what had been let go, surrounded with my body

protecting where it had been - what was uncried, undowned,

what would not be a lie, Mother.