Catherine Cleary

IT IS MORNING I AM ACCIDENTALLY DROWNING

It is morning I am accidentally drowning
a moth in my breastmilk. It slides down
the sink’s ceramic walls in a heavy flap of wet wings
to rest, motionless, at the drain.
It is evening and my husband and father-in-law
talk softly about the children at the border.
They whisper so as not to wake the baby,
whose eyelids are fluttering     lashes blonde
where they join skin. Of the 5,500 children separated,
545 parents cannot be found.     My husband’s voice
raised     quivers. Volume,          he says,
is not the best measure, but          it’s often where we start.
What might be different if maternity were genderless? 
The way we speak of God—                can God change God’s mind?—                  
Of the children, my father-in-law says,
It must be more complicated.            
In photographs the baby’s chin is slick with milk.     It is morning
and milk dribbles down his jaw before disappearing into sunshine.
It is evening. Upstairs, twin globes bathe our bed in light—     the moon and its reflection.
In the morning I will again push the baby into and out of a beam of sun,
thinking about our bodies, tired of thinking about our bodies.

CATHERINE CLEARY has an MFA from the University of Houston; her work appears in The Denver Quarterly, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. She lives with her family in Austin, Texas.