Aninut

It will be a boy, the psychic assured.

See there, he hovers around you now

waiting for his invitation

into your life

and after many weeks of holding back blood

I knew he had come

Abram or Amir or Aarav,

little Ani

the way he sat with me that night hushed and lit

by the fire    small as the worm moon

and we listened together for that gentle pulse of ocean

to rise in my veins, for him to announce his life

inside mine

a faucet drip the only rhythm held

but for the wood rustling as it softened to ash

and later when there was a dream of a spark

like metal on metal

that brought with it the familiar red

it was the signal of my body’s refusal to keep him, or his

to remain

Meghan Sterling’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Rust & Moth, SWIMM, The Night Heron Barks, The West Review, UCity Review, Sky Island Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Menacing Hedge and many others. She is Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review, a Finalist in River Heron Review’s 2021 annual poetry contest, and winner of Sweet Literary's 2021 annual poetry contest. Her collection These Few Seeds is out now from Terrapin Books. Sterling is Program Director for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland, Maine. Read her work at meghansterling.com.