Virtue

Photo by Kate Griffor

Patience,

Patience. 

Asleep in a carpeted house on the beach,
the pomegranate seeds have started to grow in my stomach. 

By morning I should have a fertile blossom.

For what has all this discipline been?

It’s a violent birth in a hospital on the east side,
a dropped baby and hatred since consciousness.

It’s sitting in a plastic chair at a Marriott breakfast,
holding gasps of breath for just four more seconds.

It’s weighing on my eyes ––
an oil stain on a green silk skirt.

It’s the dish soap she used to fix it.

Oh, my discipline,
It’s a bird biting at a seed.

Then it’s the back of his mother’s house, 

fourteen again –– 

as I wait for salvation on a navy bedspread.

All,

all

this discipline –
it must be for a worthy moment.