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She listens distraughtly.
The engine has stopped.
The pistons of white clapboard and
lavender azaleas are stilled.
No longer does the axle of paychecks
revolve to put each small day
a little further along than the one before.
The reliably Middle-American wheels sit idly
upon a given . . . a well-paved, well-marked
given . . . suddenly become a taken-away.
They had been promised (yes, she was sure
there was a promise) a destination
where the laws of self break down
and one plus one equals more than just two.
Something else broke down instead,
something intimately yet inaccessibly inside her.
She listens for the sound of the engine
but can hear only the still-echoing
bang when a billion-year-long
line of motherhood, a stay wire anchored
in the primordial lode, snapped with
the doctor's judiciously chosen words . . .
. . . infertile . . . nothing we can do . . .
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