From the March/April 2012 issue of Orion. Boggs is the author of the short-story collection Mattaponi Queen.

It’s spring when I realize that I may never have children, and around that time the thirteen-year cicadas return, filling the air with the sound of their singular purpose: reproduction. In the woods where I live, their mating song, a whooshing, endless hum, makes me feel like I am living inside a seashell. When I visit my reproductive endocrinologist’s office in May, I notice the absence of sound in the air surrounding the concrete and steel hospital complex. In the waiting…