I came in through the propped screen door and everything in the room was pink, strung up, taped down, tethered so it could not follow me back out. Balloons on ribbons, straining toward the ceiling the way I strain toward everywhere, and not one of them allowed to go. They tie their joy to a chair leg. I would never have thought of that.
The small folded clothes on the table, I lifted one sleeve, just to feel it, and a woman laughed and pressed it flat again. So soft, so unworn, waiting for a body that is not here yet, that no one in this room has met, and they are all so certain it is coming.
They are building a nest around a shape that does not exist, and they are sure. How do they be so sure of the not-yet? I only know the now and the gone.
I found her in the middle of it, the one they circled, hands laid on the round of herself, and I lifted the loose hair off the back of her neck because it looked warm there, and she closed her eyes for one second like I had said something. I hadn't. I never do. I only carry.
I took the smell of the frosting and somebody's perfume and the powder-sweet of all that folded cotton, and I pulled the ribbons taut as I went, and I left the door swinging.
I am three streets over now, and I am carrying her small sigh to no one, and I have already forgotten the color of the room.