yes, but

You’ll wake to the drip of a leaky roof

or a rodent-ravaged pantry,

and recall the forgotten property tax payment that has incurred a 10% penalty.

Your preteen child will aim her arrow

at your bedroom window while she is sent outside for being naughty

and when she lets it go with an “I hate you, mommy!”

it will shatter onto your green, antique desk

into which she had carved her name, then made it indelible with sharpie.

Your mother, who finally learns to trust

after being twice abandoned by your father and your father-figure, respectively,

will take a leap, and you will all squeal and say, “Yes! She deserves this!”

but she will be vulnerable again and she will sob-  

only the second time you’ve heard it from her-

about her loneliness.

You ultimately have to accept that,

although you’d pity others with a limited capacity for reproduction, barrenness,

and considered it one of your greatest fears to not experience the reiteration yourself and him into lives that perpetuate and multiply,

you will have to accept it because you are, collectively, barren.

After tens of thousands of dollars and debt and certainty of success x7,

and a still sore right-bum cheek from the 16-guage hormone shots,

you would still bleed, still cramp,

still hear that haunting, “I’m sorry,” on the line

and your arms will continue with their achy emptiness.

But

there is that sticky, small hand, whether brown or pink,

that slips into yours in the dark that soothes the ache,

and the soft, hazel eyes that look at yours with the intentionality of never ending that reassures,

and the whiff of pine and wild rose that you catch in the quiet mornings,

and the memories of Concord and crisp orchards and cobblestone and libraries and clear streams.

There is that scent of plumeria on your grandmother’s pillow,

and that dialogue between small objects mimicking the way your babies see the world.

There is the cool greenness of babaganoush on the corner of a chewy, resisting bite of warm pita,

and the sweet cooing of birds’ and babies’ songs to greet your ears while surfacing from sleep,

and, always, the hope of more--  that love did, indeed, conquer and progression is eternal.