I didn't bear a child with it, bear a drunk friend's arm around itsshoulders, bear it over a fence in one go, bear it from Harlem toWall Street by foot, run it until it vomited, run it until it vibratedwith joy, lean it long against a redwood it had hiked to, lay it onthe earth beneath the aurora borealis, march it white-laced untilit wed, march it in Baltimore for a killed Black man, march itto war until it was dead, bear a lover eager on its spine, bear itback to its natal soil, bear it to the lake's center under the swiftawesome power of its legs. Bear witness: I did not make its child.I didn't bear it to the home it asked me for. Instead, as if bystumbling, as if by walking backward even, as if the beginning &not the end held the drum & cymbal & jazz hands,                                                                                                                I bore threelovers in its mouth, bore a blow to its cheek, bore the snap &drag of the Atlantic at high tide, bared its breasts on that beach,scored its ankle with a knife twelve thin times, bored into thewhite underflesh of its thigh, bore its scars, bore tattoos to coverits scars, bore hot wax where it was tenderest, bore on its face aheavy, pretty face, bore smoke deep in its tissues, bore the soft,bore the love of its family. Withheld from it embraces, withheldfrom it a decent meal. Bore love for the boy who refused it, borethe death of the boy who didn't, bore the weight it made fromthe pills I had handed it, bore its joints' irreparable ache, borethe turned, sweet smell beneath its breast, taught water to bearit so I could rest, bore its sloughings, bore its swellings, bore itsmanifold solitudes, and on the rare, keen nights it stayed withme, I bore its bright fragrant solitary intolerable pleasure.