B.D. Love TWINS I lost my twins. My student sits across the clumsy metal desk. I hemorrhaged— Then she breaks down. She weeps. She strains to pass a doctor's note so as not to be judged unexcused for work she's failed to do. I shake my head—I, no father, not ever likely to be, as if I know something, although I do. I know the fate of vanished twins, while her boyfriend still believes himself a father-to-be. He couldn't allow her words, this loss of his, so now she grieves to me, a stranger claiming nothing who falls on her world, blank as a winter mist. My hands condense across her trembling fist.