Little Aries

after "State Bird" by Ada Limon

Confession: I did not want to be a mother.

Sleepless late nights and a dozen late-night jobs,

Sore feet off-beat, sweet sweet summertime

baby blues- I’m still paying my dues;

I pay yours too; one pound of flesh more

like seven pounds and seventy new fears and

seven-hundred more reasons to be alive.

Not even the argument from new nursing-mother hormones

could sway my alley-cat paranoia of a relationship

deeper and more terrifying and more delicate

than anything I’d ever know again.

But now my galaxy lives and breathes in your eyes

and I see you in the face of every girl I meet,

and every girl I meet in the constellation Aries.