I can be a brat, a badly behaved child. I can get mad as hell. I can throw things if I really have to. I can say a multitude of words that would lift your brow. I can even tell you that I hate you. I can retreat to my own fort or dugout inside a large hollow tree. I can stay there until I know the way is clear. I can scream inside my chest and wish things were different. I can talk about it to myself, reason, regress in memory of words that pricked like needles–thorns that scratched skin red, cut branches pruned before a season.
I can retaliate. I can level with self, with the creator–with God–with mankind, with the universe inside this dark spot. I can say it’s nothing. I can believe those words. I can try that it’s nothing. I can plug my ears to a holler. I can cover my eyes to a grudge, to a disloyal look, to a turned back, to a misguided meaning. I can choose to walk away. I can hate even deeper, much stronger. I can envy and say I don’t care, that I never wanted. I can lean back into grooves of sharp wood that cuts through fabric like a sharp blade. I can undo and re-do–again. I can never come out. I can be a child.
I can pretend that people don’t get this way. I can let go of their social perfection, their words of advice even when not asked. I can ignore their conceit, their smothering effect, a glance, their eyes glaring through pages of intended hurt and vile. I can remind myself that I’m not the only brat, a badly behaved child. I can understand that they’re vicious brats trying to be adults or play like they are. I can see that they have the cosmetic material in the yards, hanging on porches, dressing their front rooms, laying nicely on their cherry dinette tables.
I can stand up. I can walk out of my tree. I can go into a dingy building, a barren room with vacant walls. I can straighten an empty picture frame on a dusty string. I can see the blur of dirty eggshell paint by the shadow of my nose. I can smell the stench. I can see my soiled dress with pastel flower pattern and sunlight through broken glass. I can feel him gone. I can feel a womb cry. It’s pathetic. I can taste salt in tears that never end. Drops drip and slip off through cracks of aged wood in a floor where dirt seeps.
I can feel his hand in my heart. I remember how tiny his fingers were. I can still hear his weep. I can still see his thin bones. His face fit in my palms. I can wonder what would have been.
He could have been my child.
(For those grieving through miscarriage, SIDS, or loss of an infant or child through another form of death.)
Leave a Reply