Indecision

For you it might be like a sneeze
Or a switch to de-caf
For me, it’s a door to a tornado
Rolling fast toward me as I huddle in a broken down shack
Looking out at colorful round hay bales
Flying away
The ones that stay put are babies that might live.

Does anyone wonder why I’m stalling?
Even though doctors say “Hurry. Your age.”
They don’t know how it is
Sitting here in my summer clothes
Sipping a cocktail of sweet, hopeful thoughts
Knowing I’m safe on this island for a minute longer

Some part of me is hoarding up novels and notebooks and programs on Huloo
Preparing for the words, “Bed rest”
There are many things much worse than those words
Things you don’t ever want to see
Things that could be behind doors number two and three
The halls of dead baby for instance.

I watch my sister in-law bounce around in pregnant ease
Travel four straight days in a car full of screaming, whining kids
Up late, up early
Never a sad face from that one
Painting rooms and breathing fumes for the umpteenth time

How come no one else seems to get the tornado drill?
I’m like an 18th century lady all fragile in her white linen bed
Making babies is brutal to my constitution
So I stay here one last moment
Soaking up sun, reading books, hiking up mountains
I’m safe. But some part of me is easing its way up to that door.
Hoping I can harness one of those intact little rainbow bales
Knowing the storm will pummel me if it can.
I hate its dark winds the way Sigourney Weaver hates an alien.
I want to fight it, hide from it, elude it.
Then I just want to stay here, on solid ground.
Forget the whole thing.
Walk away while I still have a chance.