from 13th Balloon by Mark Bibbins

from 13^th Balloon

A few months after you died

I came home on a black and freezing night

to find a small cardboard box

on the steps outside my building

I opened the lid and inside

was a single newborn animal

hairless pink and clean

a rat a guinea pig I couldn’t tell

Was it moving        I don’t remember now

why can’t I remember that now

It can’t have been moving

it couldn’t have

been alive

I considered my cat        asleep

in my apartment        would he

kill this creature if it lived

Did I have any milk

and how would I get any milk

anyway inside this tiny thing

that surely could not be alive

What kind of person

might have come and left

a baby possibly dead

animal there in a box

on my stoop        what kind

If this was a test I failed it

I carried the box

three long blocks

to the river and threw it in

I have never so much

as in the moment the box went under

the surface of the water

stabbing and stabbing and stabbing itself

   with the moon’s million obsidian knives

wished that I were dead

If death is a test I fail

If death is a test I pass