Think of Me Like This by Anya Johnson

"Then the train arrives, rearranging our hair with a wet sigh."

Think of Me Like This

by Anya Johnson

Sometimes I tell a man I’m undecided about children 
to seem more like someone 
he would have children with.
I’ve never been one of those women, I say, 
shrugging in the dim heat of the platform. 
Then the train arrives, rearranging our hair with a wet sigh, 
the tail of the thought its own internal weather. 
The thing is, I want him to imagine me a mother, 
a reluctant one, surprised 
at the moon of my belly. 
Have you ever had a man tell you, I want to put a baby in you? 
Have you felt the ripple of his mouth 
giving you what he thought you wanted? 
These days, I’m trying to be more like water. 
Water isn’t afraid. It doesn’t hesitate. It carries 
anything. But all I know of love is that distance 
is kind. And all I know of mothering 
I learned from my mother, 
just like anyone else.