Content Warning: Death/grief, depression
If your death was a birth, then this grief must be the baby I never asked for.
That baby would be old enough to know how to put on their own shoes, but only on the wrong feet.
That baby would be old enough to be explaining in full ridiculously garbled sentences the extent of its
displeasure at our lack of juice boxes in the house.
When mom had our older sister, the one who isn’t you,
her postpartum depression stuck around like gum to a bowl cut-
no peanut butter in sight
as each day she’d stand on the porch with her new small weight in her arms
as she watched my dad pull down the driveway to go to class
and write his thesis on monks and their never-ending grief.
The baby that grew in your absence isn’t a baby anymore
but instead sits in a booster seat in the parking lot with the windows rolled up on a hot day
while I stare at the shelves of the grocery store
wondering what the hell the baby wants to eat
what do they fucking want to eat?
The baby didn’t cry when it was born.
They went with me to chemistry class and didn’t even cry when I left the room
didn’t cry at all until they did,
and it’s now rare that the baby isn’t crying.
The baby is listening to the new Taylor Swift album.
I am throwing a tantrum next to the baby listening to the new Taylor Swift album
because you never got to.
The baby is four years old and has a brand new matching backpack and lunchbox set.
They are outgrowing shoes and jackets and mittens
and the baby talks but not about you-
How could they?
The baby’s first words were the call from the chaplain’s office that said “you need to come home now”.
I went home and did what you do, meaning I don’t remember what I did.
The baby doesn’t know me from before
But they know how to say the alphabet backwards
and all of the impossibly long names of dinosaurs
and insists that they are not just four, but four and a half precisely
and my mom wants to hold the baby but I always lie
and say I’m working on attachment theory
and so no one can hold the baby even when it’s raising hell on the monitor
I turn that shit up and pretend it’s our favorite song from our favorite CD,
the one we’d always scream the loudest to,
even though you only ever listened to the same three discs.
The baby is always throwing up.
And by that I mean the baby projectile vomits like an exorcism
every full moon even though you didn’t believe in that stuff.
The baby learned to crawl and I failed summer gov class.
The baby learned to walk and I ran right into the arms of another person
who did not care about me at all,
much less the baby.
The baby is five this summer and knows more about the pandemic than you do, which is to say all of it.
The baby tugs on my sweater sleeve when we walk together.
The baby wears shirts with trains on them and smells like the detangler we always used
after swimming in the public pool.
The baby is old enough to use safety scissors and fat orange glue sticks
The baby is old enough to go to school and meet other people’s babies
I want the baby all to myself because when other people’s babies meet the baby we can’t not talk about the baby.
The baby is so close to learning to read
The baby is so close to reading a poem
The baby is so close to me I have no choice but to hold her.
On the days I let myself miss you I sit on the floor of my room in my college town
and the baby sits in my lap.
I let the baby sit in my lap.
One day the baby will grow older than nineteen
but maybe the baby will simply disappear
six months before its twentieth birthday, just like you did.
You, who came into my room in the early hours of the morning
just to wish me goodbye before your trip.
Me, who barely opened my eyes but held out my arms
for the embrace of your older ones.
I am older than you now.
The baby is in a phase of asking questions
that I do not have the answers to
but I comb my fingers through her hair
that is beginning to turn strawberry like yours.
I choose to hold her.
She is so heavy.