my son a womb dream, five months till lung breath.

I’m trying to book a sonogram, captive on hold.

 

It’s lunch in the student lounge.

We are all leaning into out futures.

 

The phone yawns its humdrum dumbed down

version of a Beatle song, when the Challenger

 

explodes into world wreck. Time crashes out

of itself. Hope smashes bug- like on a windshield

 

and Christa McAuliffe ejects from her name.

That moment squeezes in besides

 

others when the world stopped breathing.

What it was before ceases to be.

 

We can’t resurrect innocence, but we hold

it for as long as we can bear.

 

Something to remember with a half- raised flag

an appointed silence, or a story in a poem. 

 

I waited through the news to get my appointment

returned to class and felt the baby kick.