Who said I wanted this life?
Trudging into the certain 
strife of the unknown.  Trudging
obediently as wife, 

straggling behind our household 
and all the goods that we could 
carry.  Trudging on the knife’s
edge of God’s judgement.  But,

what about the still-born babes
we had to bury beneath 
the tamarisk tree?  And what 
about the canary that 

sang to me whenever I 
would sit for a quiet spell
in the shade, just to tarry 
with my still-born hopes laid there?

[Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places (including the United Kingdom and Japan), but now calls North Carolina home.  An AWP Intro Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks, No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound.   When not writing or reading or editing BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, she is training for running road races, or practicing yoga, while sharing a house with her husband, six housecats, and a backyard full of birds.]