Not everyone emerges
fully formed from seafoam
like me. He was my last, third
and final failed experiment
in birth control: I wasn’t just
on the half-shell, but confidently
on the pill with its ninety-nine percent
success rate. My own conception
should have been a cautionary tale.
With my legendary legacy filling
an entire city, you may ask, what
was one more child? Go ahead,
ask, suffer my wrath. Despite my exhaustion    
my womb shellacked him 
with luster, lacquered rose petals
and glitter, flesh and bone 
from the moment he was the tiniest nit
of grit, irritating my softest bits. All this
while I changed diapers, boiled bottles
for the others, not to mention attending
to military battles, ushering people’s hearts
from vice to virtue and volunteering
down at the VFW. It’s not that I didn’t
want him, but there was already a lot to do.
My hands were full, and Vulcan
didn’t help much around the house
sweating over the forge
making an honest wage.