Photo by Raul Gonzalez Escobar on Unsplash
Odds are I’ll be grocery shopping 
pretending to actually care about 
the rising cost of 
                                    well, everything. 
I’ll weigh plums, squeeze avocados 
and all this time my son won’t be there 
or anywhere. Or out there somewhere 
eight-balling his way to heaven. I’m 
scared all the time. Sad too as in how 
sad just is 
                                  oppressive & lonely 
and misunderstood. When he was born
I thought, for the first time, about happiness 
how such a tiny beating heart could connect 
me to the universe, his existence a lantern 
to my dark friction, intrinsically I’ll know 
because my appetite will stone, my wholeness 
swallowed by hunger.
Lisa Zaran is an American poet and the author of eight collections including The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. She lives and writes in Arizona.
 
            