I am afraid.

after Anna Liffey by Eavan Boland

In the end

it will not matter

That I am afraid.

If he and I were in a boat

and he worried about the water

That would mean only we have already sunk.

It is not one thing that has me up in the night,

lying on a couch that my sister once gave me.

Money and blood sugar.

My mother and your nail beds.

Consider the red hawk that sits on the telephone pole

at the edge of the yard

at the edge of the world.

How it circles before it lands.

My son asks if the baby will turn out okay

because the other ones didn’t.

I tell him we just have to keep the faith.

He asks me, what is faith and where do you keep it?

In the end, it will not matter,

That I am afraid.