It’s the oldest thing in the world, birth.

Older than angels, older than hands

reaching out for the holiness of touch,

older than fear, even. And yet to catch a glimpse

of your own becoming in the gas station bathroom

before driving through the night is to become Gabriel

for an instant, annunciator and annunciated

flickering neon in your own dark pupils,

the terror of incarnation scratched into the mirror’s edge

and along the roadside from here to sunrise.