Julie Farstad, Wolfdream, 2006 (Artist Website)
Oil on canvas on panel, 24 x 19 inches
Six years and one month in
and your bouquet of flowers dries
out on the kitchen table. Every time
I think of babies I think of death.
By the time we raise just one,
the hourglass bottom-heavy, our youth
becomes the empty air. Your teeth
are longer each year—you feign surprise
at the gray trimmings on the floor
around your barber’s chair. My complexion
folds; I feel my skull poke from under
my fat cheeks. What is it that we want to raise?
Another future skeleton. A waste of time.