On The Subject Of Potential Poem by Noah Smits

The child I will never have
runs pushing the cart ahead of me
down the vegetable aisle
and I point
and she looks back
and I say "kohlrabi"
and she says "yuck"—
we tried kohlrabi last week.
"Daddy, what's this? "
(something white, something leafy)
—sound it out, I say—
"bawwkkkk"
and I smell rain from an outside tearing itself
through the well-conditioned indoor fabric
"choyyyy"
a dimming of lights, a wobble of an axis,
& a scene in the hallway,
smelling of musty air, carpet, and late spring sun,
sends a plasmonic rocket
through the evening shadows:
my beautiful daughter,
the child I'll never embrace,
leaps,
flickering,
into my arms—
pure joy and perfect love,
so incompatible with what I am,
and under a hazard moon's glower
I wave my arms in front of my body,
colliding with and clutching
nothing
nothing but wind
and unrealized potential.