Else

Go back to the beginning of the beginning and the darkness filled with 1,000,000 eggs.

Cilia beating their microscopic hairs in the fallopians.  
 
Almond-shaped and pearly grey, ova yolking nucleus to an odor 
sperm might sense. . . .
 
      Every month, tumbling out of my body.        
 
Something to do with not trusting
myself, this childlessness.
                                              Something to do with squandering
         what I’m given.                          
And here 
one must find gentleness.  
The owl of Minerva 
spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk,
 my father says to me 
 
by way of Hegel, about something else entirely. We must soldier on.
                                     Send me the bonbons, they’ll get me through 
 
to the end.               Who else have 
I lost?