Plan B

Veterinary assistant
was just something that came along
at the right time to pay the bills

while she was going back to school.
Her boyfriend at the time told her
about it because his ex had worked there

before her mom got sick
and she had to move back to Boulder
because her dad was still in Ankara

teaching economics at the university
and hoping he might be able
to get his novel published.

It was a book about a geneticist
working in the produce section
of a Miami supermarket

who meets the sort of woman he had always
thought he would marry,
but knows that his wife waiting in Guyana

was left pregnant at 17
by the first great love of her life
and he cannot bear to repeat such cruelty.

And she, working as a typist
to supplement what he can send her,
once a week walks to the city park

in the evening with the child
that she never meant to have
where they watch for the first stars

and like a ritual, as they return home,
she always tells her darling
you can be anything you dream.