by Megan McDermott

You agonize over the list
of my must-haves: sex,
relationship, rings, the end
of weekly succession of birth control
patches smoothed onto body parts
(abdomen, butt cheek, upper arm,
back of shoulder), a point
in career conducive to maternity
leave, a home, a plan, a decision
to befriend things that can’t
be resolved, like fears
for a country or a planet.

Already there are so many dooms
you’d rather your hypothetical
children never know but no doom
defines like the prospect you
might only ever be a wisp
in a soul busied with other identities.
You’ve doomed me, you accuse.
To reside in the theoretical;
to mother longing instead of flesh;
to mother metaphors; to be one.

You beg: At least freeze
your eggs, do something.
And I tell you we have time,
cite my mother eight years
older at the time of our birth
than we are right now, though
at thirty-eight she’d already
had one child and sixteen years
if marriage. Still, I tell you
a lot can change in eight years.

Or nothing changes.
I’m sorry I wish more than plan.

In my own way, I am generous
if I keep you from your dream.
I’ll stay the one who loses while
you are kept safe from stakes
much higher than the grief
of what-ifs.

Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Western Massachusetts. Her first full-length poetry collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, came out this year from Fernwood Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks: Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel). Connect with her on Twitter @megmcdermott92 or at meganmcdermottpoet.com.