Santa Monica Birth

Someone decapitated all Birds of Paradise along Ocean Avenue; strollers and shoes trample the discarded beaks. She keeps walking. At noon a hallway speaker booms Code Blue Code Blue one minute before her grandson is born. In the evening, a nurse hands him to her: clean, swaddled, murmuring: the fullness of his being spears her. Why didn’t I pick them up? she wonders, arms tightening around the infant, whispers I still carry you! to her son when he comes to take his child.