THE FAWN

A week before a doctor transferred you

from the studied care of an embryologist
through a loaded catheter into my uterus,

a friend told me about her dream:

three deer (two does and a fawn) hovering
at the edge of her property. She said,

I think it’s your baby telling us she is close.

The day before I took a pregnancy test,
I saw two wandering on the side of the road—

spotted and small, their delicate hooves

like dark ballet slippers. I wondered if
it was you and the one taken from my body

too soon (or perhaps too late),

returned only to shepherd you home.
The morning I told my father I was pregnant,

another fawn stepped boldly from the woods

to watch us curiously from the across
the pond. At first, I thought it was you—

the daughter still growing in my womb

as I write this—come to see us
before the soldering of soul and body,

but now, I believe it was her again,

the lost sibling on the other side of time
and blood, watching us from beyond

a thousand unrewindable moments,

in another world where I cannot reach her,
where all unfinished things dwell.