Listening to Elvis on a Sunday Afternoon

A prose poem

The baby came early.

She still wasn’t sure what to name it yet. It.

Elvis was on the radio, and she was limp on the sofa,

exhausted with the heat and the weight of her body.

Darryl left some months back, leaving enough cash

to cover the room and food.

But she’d been able to work up until two weeks ago,

So she had money set by, to get away.

If that is what she wanted.

She wasn’t sure about that, either.

The longer it went, the more she felt like a force of nature.

Like she could squat and birth the whole of humanity.

She understood now how some need pregnancy

to validate their worth as women.

She’d never been the type to burn bras or sing along to Joan Baez songs.

She’d rather have Elvis and a mean-eyed man with a bottle of whiskey.

That, she told herself, is how she ended up here.

 

At the hospital, the baby slipped out of her, spiritless.

She’d hoped it would have kicked up a squall,

shown her it had the spunk to survive life outside the womb,

outside the arms of a mother who could love it.

But it was quiet and almost immediately turned its tiny wise eyes upon her.

Born with eyes open and a full head of hair, she thought.

Isn’t there some old saying about babies like that?

It was a girl. The name fell from her lips as the nurse asked.

Belinda.

She waited to feel a connection, that motherly instinct she’d read about

in the books the doctor kept giving her.

But there was nothing, just a deep feeling of relief for her body.

She looked away from the baby and imagined leaving town.

Then she felt the weight of the baby’s gaze on her and imagined it differently,

with bottles and diapers and the smell of milk.

With Belinda.