sometimes she listens

with a glass
to the adjoining wall
between her home and the neighbours,

For often in the early morn
next door’s two year old, oblivious
to the drum reverberation of renovated floor boards

will run laps of the hallway:
thump thump thump thump thump.
And listening through the dome of a water glass

acutely tuned to the cliché of tiny feet,
she notes with neutrality that  –
having forgone children,

the vast acreage of her womb, the unburst seed of her ovaries
do not glow, or ache, or vibrate with deficit
she is replete.

And still – that sound!
the thump thump thump thump thump
is so generous: it gives and gives and gives.

Despite the years, she listens and remembers
when each wall was a canvass,
each meal a riot of taste, each day the virgin experience.

She wonders if in place of salty lithium pills,
depressives should be given instead tiny devices,
cued to play the fibrillation of small feet

running long hallways.