I've never wanted to have children. I love children - and there are several I count among my good friends - but I've never experienced that particular yearning or intent. Every once in a while, though, something gives me a twinge. It passes almost as soon as I notice it, because at my core it's still true that I don't want kids. But I'm grateful for the fleeting twinge, that thread that connects me to something that usually eludes me.
Egg
by C.G. Hanzlicek
I'm scrambling an egg for my daughter.
"Why are you always whistling?" she asks.
"Because I'm happy."
And it's true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn't
Have seen it as my future.
It's partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I've come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we're told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn't confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here's your egg.
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