“Prediction” by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt

Prediction

Nine months from now,

after all this sequestering

is over, the ban is lifted

and we can leave our houses,

there’ll be a boom.

Thousands even millions

of babies coming into our

bruised and anxious world

after our season of quiet cloister.

There are only so many hands

of Solitaire we can play.

If babies are made

when the power goes out

and we go to bed

a bit earlier than usual

how much more

when we’re confined

to our homes

with only each other

for company?

I see the tiny bodies

forming even now,

knit together

with the strands

of our social isolation,

these new ones

bursting forth

from our collective

quarantine.

Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt’s stories, poems and essays have been published in Best Canadian Essays 2019 and Best Canadian Essays 2015, The Antigonish Review (forthcoming), Grain, EVENT, Prairie Fire, Malahat Review, subTerrain, carte blanche, Room, Crux, The Centrifugal Eye, Qarrtsiluni, The Occupy Anthology and Water Lines: New Writing from the Eastern Townships of Quebec.

Tanya has been nominated for a National Magazine Award as well as a Western Magazine Award and received a Canada Council Grant for her memoir manuscript, Peacekeeper’s Daughter. She holds an MA from McGill and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

Read more about Tanya and her writing at https://tanyaallattbellehumeur.com/

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