Baby Hog

They called some boys June Bugs, and all the grandfathers were Pappies. Pappies made me think of milk, the way it leaks and then weans the babies with their cherub cheeks and red runny noses. I held that baby—I don’t even remember whose newborn baby—so long they all began to comment on me. “Baby hog,” one said. “Clucky,” said another. I was always lonely, always wishing for someone. That’s why I made love to a June Bug in the car by the railroad tracks, why we didn’t use a condom. But I never got his baby. I wonder how life might’ve changed.