Strathmore weight white sky. Clouds impressed.
Particles of clouds drifting down here.

The heater oscillates between the two folded dogs.
Curtains on the white windowsill are translucent.
Their carved lines, a second layer of sky.

Quiet.

Dogs wait for something.
They don’t feel guilty when they sleep in the day.

You better get your sleep now.
You better get your sleep now but you can’t.
The body has other plans. Sheets twist.
Floating on the rim of sleep, dipping for a bad dream and back up again.

The dogs stir, unfold and fold, origami paper with dirt on the creases.
This is how your body prepares you. See how it’s not so bad.
The baby turns, pushes a foot or maybe a knee along my left rib.

He hangs like a bat from a cord, and he’s blue.
Not breath, not spirit, not human yet.
When I see you I’ll know your name.

When else do I wait like this, not knowing the day nor the hour.
Life and death come unannounced.
The baby turns and there’s an elbow or maybe a head touching my sciatic nerve.

Downward-facing dog at three o’clock in the morning.
The blue baby shifts. The dogs shift.

I wake to a head on my bladder. The curtains rock by the box fan.
A continuous rhythm, a heartbeat, the sound a baby knows
before he comes to the surface. Swish heart swish bladder swish swish.
The sky brightens.

When babies are born what they know is that it’s cold.
Ask him when he’s two years old and speaks:
babies say later that they remember they’re born they’re cold.
I will wrap my baby in blankets right away and put him against my heart
if I remember.
The sky brightens in irregular intervals.

The particles of clouds scurry horizontally past the window.
When is too late to sleep when sleep grazed all night. Don’t ask the dogs,
who burrow, castrated, babies their whole lives.

I have a photograph of fireworks and it looks just like these tree branches.
Slow monochrome fireworks. I didn’t dream about you all night.
Fast fireworks along the sciatic nerve.
Fireworks on the due date.

This is tenuous.

I can’t believe you’re real until I’m holding you out here in the cold.

Your skin translucent sky, my skin done doubting and not resting yet.