what am I doing here? I am twenty three and someone hands me a decade and a baby under the searing floodlights of a delivery room / somehow I keep her alive for two months, somehow I keep myself alive for two months, somehow my husband keeps us alive for two months / I watch her unfold and unfold, an impossible puzzle who didn’t know how to keep her eyes open and now when she screams it sounds almost like “mama” / how did I get here I am twenty six and newly arrived at the tail end of old weird Austin sleeping on my roommate’s enormous bean bag chair because I don’t own a bed / she holds her head up and the pediatrician says, “beautiful,” she has a favorite toy now, she likes the spiral black and white card more than the zigzag one or the card where I wrote down her name / how did we get here? Y ou are twenty five and falling on your ass during our first date and I’m turning you down because I’m still hung up on my last lover / she goes to daycare in one month and I am not ready, I want to pull her back inside me and keep her as much as I want to give her the whole world sharp and unvarnished / who did I leave behind in that room full of frantic blue scrubs and terrible light? I hold her as close as I hold my daughter, terrified and dizzy with love.