This is the last time

I am going to ask it: Where is my wife?
Aren’t the changelings in folktales
the babies, not their mothers?

This baby mine, yours, no doubt. Not
in my mind. My misgivings remain
all for you today. For all these months faith

overshadowed disbelief, now I am tired, love turns
toward eclipse, so hard to glimpse this long night
the brightness we expected

together. Where is my wife? I lied,
I’m asking again. I want to stop but
can I? I won’t. Where is the woman I chose

and chose again, the woman whose laugh has become
an empty cup? Never mind the questions. I am
feeling for her hand in this limp dark.

I will drag her back into her new body.

Suzanne Swanson from What Other Worlds: Postpartum Poems Ytterli Press