Today’s guest poem is Part 1 in a 2-part guest series featuring the lovely Andrea Beltran. Folks, she is the real deal – a wonderful wielder of words for both prose and poetry, and I love following her on Twitter for her positivity and kindness. I followed her tweet to this poem she wrote for Pyrta Journal last week, and was captivated by it, so I invited her to share.  Don’t miss tomorrow’s post, where she will share thoughts on the process of writing poetry.

Finding Baby
He’s not in a basket wrapped
in blue and white blankets
at our front door nor in the screen
we glare at during the first ultrasound
unable to translate letters and numbers,
notes the doctor makes without elaboration. He’s not
in the six vials of blood they take from my right arm or the eight
removed from yours. He’s not in
the second ultrasound or your biopsy
nor in the parenting magazines
we never ordered coming in the mail.
He’s not in the silence growing
in between bread loaves
and pot roasts in our poorly lit
home. He’s not here but I can hear him
calling from different rooms,
this unending game of hide-and-seek.

 

Andrea lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. Her poems have recently appeared in flash quake, Rose & Thorn Journal, and Referential Magazine. She blogs about poetry and writing at andreakristen.blogspot.com.