What simulation’s numb you ask
if I want children this time

definitive we boil Kraft mac
and cheese. I toss our meager sweet

potatoes in oil and ramble about financial
self-worth the oven nearly at four hundred

degrees. I can’t stop petting your shoulder
the ashy cat roams in the loam of our love

our newly swept hardwood the house
our home for now so limited already

steam from the inside a pressure
cooker of different timelines. What river

these converging lives to seek meaning
in the biological job postings some of us

are born to call. My dad was sixty-one
when I was born my grandfather clock

ticks nonexistent. We have gorged in all
our broken cabinets to rustle the blue

plastic grocery bag pile. I can’t stand
to live another day preoccupied.

(originally published in Flights, Summer 2021)