Loop (in Dirt and Gold)

I sold the necklace, my name written in gold.

I wanted a baby. The doctors fed me lies,

Clomid, and unicorns. I sold the necklace

my father gifted me, a gold memento,

its blood-filled cost. I was finished with him,

ten years dead. I wanted a baby. The doctors

bled me—needle needle needle—until

I was more wound than skin. Pincushion blue,

skeleton ache, zombie of want for the child

who would not wake. I was a child for my father

who left me again and again, who wanted and then

did not. I failed the gods, their nullifying tests,

and wanted to be dead like the child I lost,

buried deep in the earth, a crumb of gold.