Odds are I’ll be grocery shopping
pretending to actually care about
the rising cost of
well, everything.

I’ll weigh plums, squeeze avocados
and all this time my son won’t be there

or anywhere. Or out there somewhere
eight-balling his way to heaven. I’m

scared all the time. Sad too as in how
sad just is
oppressive & lonely

and misunderstood. When he was born
I thought, for the first time, about happiness

how such a tiny beating heart could connect
me to the universe, his existence a lantern

to my dark friction, intrinsically I’ll know
because my appetite will stone, my wholeness

swallowed by hunger.

Lisa Zaran is an American poet and the author of eight collections including The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. She lives and writes in Arizona.