In the fertility clinic waiting room
I’m the youngest by ten years,
except for a toddler
everyone smiles at wistfully.
He wears cowboy boots
and has a matching hat his mother
won’t let him put on indoors. He says
he’s not a real cowboy without it.
Before my ultrasound,
the boy’s mother says,
All it takes is one good egg.
My cousin, forty-one and beautiful,
so skinny I can’t imagine her
with a curved silhouette by Christmas,
doesn’t answer. Later,
on the car ride home, she says,
If he were my son,
he could wear that hat to funerals.
Melissa Fite Johnson’s poetry has appeared in such publications as I-70 Review, The New Verse News, and velvet-tail. Her first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award. Melissa and her husband live in Kansas, where she teaches English. For more, visit melissafitejohnson.com.