The Essentialism of the Womb

"I am angry you left me," his five year old body finally shudders into words, rushing past me, full speed.
He hasn't spoken to me in hours. Even pushing past Bandit, his best friend, who is foolishly guilty by association.

There is nothing to explain. In a world of Lilliputians.

"I have two moms," he had told her.
I hear all of this through a texting chain, of which I am no part.

He might as well have said that I eat babies in my gumbo.

After that, I had to sit at home. A good woman.
Bandit tightly clutched.
The appointed time arrives and departs.
Certainly with ceremony.
But not one I will witness.
And someone, womb more appropriately stretched, ties his shoes.
              Satisfied.
                     He is safe. 

It all happens again.
My head splits with light.
There is a rage of my own that emerges.
I put it inside of a bonnet, and I promise it a rocking chair.

My hands are tied. My eyes are crossed. My calf muscles ask if I remember how to kick.

I am not surprised, when. He will not look at me. Again.
I am not surprised, when. He cries himself to sleep.
I am not surprised.

This inoculates against nothing.

I tell him how many people love him.
I read extra pages with him before bed.
I tell him none of this is his fault. 

As if arms and legs could be parceled and won by the rolling of many dice.
His body a game of Risk.
My abstention ineligible for a Nobel peace prize.
His father barely able to look at the board.  

There is no Solomon in the Kingdom of Louisiana.

That much is clear.

Still.
I cannot help myself.
I watch and I make a list.
Of every atom I would arrange differently.
If only a higher power recognized my existence.
Sometimes I whisper it out loud.
How I would do things.
If I could.

It's a game more dangerous than Risk. 

So, we tell ourselves this is a long game. We tell ourselves to wait. Sometimes, we lie awake and say it all again out loud. One more time. As if our words alone could build the universe. We try to be the convincing one. Sometimes we blame each other. Sometimes, I hear how, if not for me, being who I am, how I am, none of this would have happened.

He said he had two mothers.

Sometimes, I agree to pretend I could have prevented it.
It's like trying on a hat.

I am supposed to be living a whole life.

But.

The light in my head makes it hard to see; the world refracted backwards, my insides spilling out. 

My apartment is flooded. My bed is gone. I barely notice.
I wait for the walls to be torn down and replaced.
The smell worsens daily, accompanied by the gurgle of the industrial dehumidifier.

I have rescued most of my clothes.

This is my life in Louisiana.

Sun Tzu counsels against too many battles at once.
Surely then, they will all fail.
I read it in a book my co-worker gave me last fall.

So, I stop by every couple of days.
Just to see.

But I know.
There is no place for me here.

"Abandon all hope of fruition" Pema Chodron once said.
Actually a hundred times, she said as much. 
But if you only know her as a nun, perhaps you do not know this --
She was a mother first.
Before all of that monastery business.
She was a mother first. 

And.

She abandoned both of her children.

My hands are tied. My eyes are crossed. My calf muscles ask if I remember how to kick.

What kind of fruition did she mean.
What set of choices did she have.

"Papa, I wish Sandy was here," he says inside of a truck, miles from home.
"I know."
"I was really mean to her yesterday."
"I think she understands."
He falls into silence.

We could build a new world with all the words we've had to leave unspoken.

But we haven't been able to find the materials, yet.