contain him long.
Soon my belly was my body. All my weight belonged to him. I stooped through the apartment, cords in my back clenched. I still lived alone in those days. The man who’d helped me make the baby had left to find his way into the television. Specks of skins of selves he’d been in other years still lay around me on the air; and, as such, I’d breathe him in. I pulled his long hair from the sink pipes. I swelled with child until I could not stand. Until I could not remember where I was or where I’d been, whenever. I’d find myself on the phone with no one. I’d find my fingers caked with grease and the window open, half-hung on the sill to jump.
To keep my wits about me, I whispered to the child. Certain words called walls of color though my vision: where washed my day with yellow, ouch tickled green, tomorrow pink. Other terms caused lengthy tones to nestle in my ear, tympanic. Sometimes the ceiling would be caving. Other nights I couldn’t see.
My hair began to fall out. My face stopped looking like my face.
Then one night I felt something open in me. Then one night I knew: a window. A threshold gunning in my stomach. I felt several things collide.
I crawled to the front door and out into the breezeway, where the air stung, where the porch lights had burnt away. The pods of moths still swarmed around them. You could see them strumming on the moon. The scummy husk of their glazed wing skin. The wooze. Trees had overgrown the stairs.
I cooed, my belly bulging, my hope composed in newborn bone.
I might have gone on alone forever.
I’m still not sure who took me in.
On the table, they cut me open. I observed from overhead. I watched them rip a seam straight up my middle. The curdle of my insides spread into the room—some kind of flesh-held flower. My eyes were open. My skin was white.
The doctors supplanted my softer parts with metal. They affixed me with a mask. If there was sound, I could not hear it over the fluorescence; the churn of something in me, bruised, innate. Small raw spots clung among the corners of my phantom vision. I felt a gauze around my head. I kept pulling at it, my short breath shaking. I swam over myself.
And from myself, from out of me, came my firstborn, came the boy.
There he was. The him. The seedling.
I watched him rise up from my gut.
I watched in silence, vibrating slightly.
I’d wanted so long for something somewhere.
I did not expect to be called back down.
The boy was very large. His skin was slick and bright and runny. The doctors strained to lift him out. There was squealing on the air.
Back in my body, I saw ultraviolet. The room’s girders trembled. The gum.
The walls folded and unfolded. I could not taste my tongue.
The baby measured longer than a machete—his massive skull, ruined fruit. His chest and belly were splotched with something. His head of hair—blonde like Father’s—grew over his ears across his cheeks. It’d spread over his eyelids. I could see him. He could not see me.
They took him somewhere else to clean him. I heard a whisper in my ear.
I watched, half-spinning, while they sewed me up, a long rosebud in my gut, matching the one I had inside me. I could still feel the gap from where the boy had been. I waited for him there inside my arms.
They did not bring him.
They did not bring him.
I screamed a sermon at the roof.
I screamed for him to appear before me. For what I needed. In the itch.
I suffered such a long stretch of expectation curdled in my yearning. The years and years of days unraveled. Everything at once seemed far away. Far and cold and small and wilting.
Please, I stuttered, scumming. Please me .
They hushed and shushed and there-there patted. They shoveled applesauce into my mouth. I spat the pap back at them out onto my bib, all dizzy. The lights went in and out around.
I continued: Where’s my baby? What’s the number? Press him to me.
The answers sprang back from within: You are not
Soon my belly was my body. All my weight belonged to him. I stooped through the apartment, cords in my back clenched. I still lived alone in those days. The man who’d helped me make the baby had left to find his way into the television. Specks of skins of selves he’d been in other years still lay around me on the air; and, as such, I’d breathe him in. I pulled his long hair from the sink pipes. I swelled with child until I could not stand. Until I could not remember where I was or where I’d been, whenever. I’d find myself on the phone with no one. I’d find my fingers caked with grease and the window open, half-hung on the sill to jump.
To keep my wits about me, I whispered to the child. Certain words called walls of color though my vision: where washed my day with yellow, ouch tickled green, tomorrow pink. Other terms caused lengthy tones to nestle in my ear, tympanic. Sometimes the ceiling would be caving. Other nights I couldn’t see.
My hair began to fall out. My face stopped looking like my face.
Then one night I felt something open in me. Then one night I knew: a window. A threshold gunning in my stomach. I felt several things collide.
I crawled to the front door and out into the breezeway, where the air stung, where the porch lights had burnt away. The pods of moths still swarmed around them. You could see them strumming on the moon. The scummy husk of their glazed wing skin. The wooze. Trees had overgrown the stairs.
I cooed, my belly bulging, my hope composed in newborn bone.
I might have gone on alone forever.
I’m still not sure who took me in.
On the table, they cut me open. I observed from overhead. I watched them rip a seam straight up my middle. The curdle of my insides spread into the room—some kind of flesh-held flower. My eyes were open. My skin was white.
The doctors supplanted my softer parts with metal. They affixed me with a mask. If there was sound, I could not hear it over the fluorescence; the churn of something in me, bruised, innate. Small raw spots clung among the corners of my phantom vision. I felt a gauze around my head. I kept pulling at it, my short breath shaking. I swam over myself.
And from myself, from out of me, came my firstborn, came the boy.
There he was. The him. The seedling.
I watched him rise up from my gut.
I watched in silence, vibrating slightly.
I’d wanted so long for something somewhere.
I did not expect to be called back down.
The boy was very large. His skin was slick and bright and runny. The doctors strained to lift him out. There was squealing on the air.
Back in my body, I saw ultraviolet. The room’s girders trembled. The gum.
The walls folded and unfolded. I could not taste my tongue.
The baby measured longer than a machete—his massive skull, ruined fruit. His chest and belly were splotched with something. His head of hair—blonde like Father’s—grew over his ears across his cheeks. It’d spread over his eyelids. I could see him. He could not see me.
They took him somewhere else to clean him. I heard a whisper in my ear.
I watched, half-spinning, while they sewed me up, a long rosebud in my gut, matching the one I had inside me. I could still feel the gap from where the boy had been. I waited for him there inside my arms.
They did not bring him.
They did not bring him.
I screamed a sermon at the roof.
I screamed for him to appear before me. For what I needed. In the itch.
I suffered such a long stretch of expectation curdled in my yearning. The years and years of days unraveled. Everything at once seemed far away. Far and cold and small and wilting.
Please, I stuttered, scumming. Please me .
They hushed and shushed and there-there patted. They shoveled applesauce into my mouth. I spat the pap back at them out onto my bib, all dizzy. The lights went in and out around.
I continued: Where’s my baby? What’s the number? Press him to me.
The answers sprang back from within: You are not
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