To My Best Friend’s Unborn Child

To My Best Friend’s Unborn Child
Kimberly Horne

I was thinking about a harmonica in space today,
how sound travels, how certain sounds are sad.

Is space sad? All that emptiness? That unbelievable
sphere you can get back to if everything goes right.

How weird it must be to see home when you’re not there.
The whine of the harmonica makes me sad like the bagpipes

and the lone trumpet, signaling death or desperation.
I think of you not because of E flat but because you remedy

this feeling. I don’t know you but I will and promise to.
Promise to love you like I love your parents.

Your mother taught me that to do crazy things in tandem
makes sense and that there’s nothing more invigorating

than the shocking comment no one else will say. Your
father taught me, still does, that Catholics are smart

and love like nobody’s business. Also, they like football
and beer. Once you get older, you’ll understand that people

aren’t just time-fillers and distractions but resources, deep, and
sometimes the water’s cold and you have to brace yourself

and sometimes it’s like seeing a wedding veil stuck in the trees.
Friendship’s a marvel that stops you in your tracks

and makes you promise yourself that you will hold onto
what is fleeting, what is sure to enrich you beyond your knowing.

I’ve been philosophical because you aren’t part of this world yet—
language and meaning, knowledge and truth, paper clips

and recycling, war, politics, disease, the ineffable urge to escape
what we proclaim holds us back. You will not be held back.

You hear music. You are swimming and lounging. You are home
and will be there again. I don’t know you but promise to

at the time of your own making. You are what is made and you
will make us better in our own images, beyond space and sadness.