You could have been a practice baby
had I known I could loan you
to be doted on by scholarship girls
earning degrees in proper child-rearing.
You could have been a beacon
for every barren couple in Colorado
who would clamor after your good
start in life. You could have had
your own surrogate-in-training
with skills to swaddle you like a burrito
while balancing a tray of brownies
on her hip, seven months gone, fake
wedding ring, pink Formica replica
of home. Spare me the grief
over nurture vs nature: which mother
gave your armpits their lavender scent.

Karen Hildebrand is the author of Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books, 2018). Her newest poems appear in Defunct, LEON, Maintenant, No Dear, Poetry Bay, Quarter After Eight, Scoundrel Time, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Trailer Park Quarterly. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Sara Greenberger Rafferty (b. 1978) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In October, 2021, she opened a solo exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2017, Gloves Off, a solo museum exhibition accompanied with a fully illustrated catalogue opened at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, NY and traveled to the University Art Museum in Albany, NY. Studio Visit, Rafferty’s first experimental monograph, was published by Inventory Press in the July 2022, and is available for purchase now.