Pregnant Girl Creek
BY KEETJE KUIPERS
There’s a girl leaned back against the chains
of the bridge, clutching her belly
through the thin rayon of her dress like it’s
covering the underside of the sun
while her friend tells her to tilt her head
right or left for the photos
she’s taking with a phone, each turn
making a stripe of pink
bangs flash across the girl’s face like the fan
of a bird’s fragile wing,
and what I mean is that she doesn’t
have much money, and also
that I know her, which isn’t possible since
the girl I know is gone,
her children born and half-grown already, nothing
of her own shimmering
left in this light-sieved moment but the memory
of her sweetness, which was true
as this creek is cold, even at the end when she’d lost
her kids and was ashamed
of herself, and I think about how careless people
like to say that it doesn’t cost
anything to be kind, but that some of us know
the truth, which is that the price
of cracking yourself open to the world long enough
to feel love for a stranger,
which is the same as feeling love for yourself,
is dear, so that it hurts
more than a little to lean in as I pass by and spend it all
on this girl, telling her
how pretty those pictures are going to be.
