My husband is calling my name. Fear
craters into my stomach and I startle
in response. I once wished he’d say my name
more often. He called me “Beautiful,”
but my name would prove he knew me,
that I was known. Now I hear my name
in a shout and I know our son is seizing
and I should come. We stand witness together,
watch his brain and body strain. I wish I never
had to hear him say my name again.
Author: sehaldorson
I write narrative nonfiction/lyrical memoir. I'm the mother of a special needs child and the wife of a cancer survivor, and I work in publishing.
I am a Woman
If I were a man, maybe I’d be the kind of man who hits women, who snaps and shakes a baby, who drags his child by the arm across a parking lot. If I were a man, maybe I would have left my son by now. Dead-beat dad. No ties to bind. No evidence to cover up. No silvery stretched skin bearing the proof. Maybe I’d be the kind of man who leaves because staying means feeling, and feeling means staying.
My emotions come on too fast and strong. They gather in my chest like an itch. I feel a pillow over my face. A cover over my coffin. I feel the tingle of adrenaline in my hands and fingertips. I feel a punch in my fists. I want to lash out, just to slow everything down, quiet it all, perhaps shock myself into silence. I feel an urge in my thighs to stretch, expand, put miles between me and what I might have done if I’d stayed.
My love for Noah is combustible. Powder and strike. The intensity of my love threatens to stoke my gasoline-soaked heart into wild flames, and I want to beat it to the punch, fight and flight. But it’s no good. I am a woman. And I am his mother. Presence or absence could land the final blow, scrape against flint, phosphorus and sulfur smoke. I have no choice but to wrap my arms tightly around him, prevent the distance that allows for a leak of oxygen to snake in and fan my fears, and, against my better judgment, I stay.
The Body is Sublime
The body is sublime in its mystery. No amount
of fruitless questioning wipes away the wonder
of ten toes and ten fingers, eyes round and blinking,
mouth suckling, small coughs and heavy sighs,
a ready human life, already stroked by DNA like Degas
gave grace to his dancers. The body
is sublime in its ability. To survive
and flourish, to love, and to recover
the wonder of seeing a belly near bursting
with jabbing elbows and round rump, a swath
of dark hair, wet from birth, so black almost blue
under light, stolen straight from a Starry Night.
The body is sublime in its capacity to love. One
and then another, all, now outside, circling in song,
like Picasso’s tribe, never alone when hands and fingers are
locked together like knots, when little arms wrap
around necks or thighs so tight it is like melding
back into One again, a mother’s moment
to be captured by Cassatt. The body is sublime
in its strength. Arms embrace each child, hold up
a world of hope–like Atlas’s own mother must, discard
old dreams with a toss, collect small joys like flowers
in a basket, soon overflowing with delicate petals of gold,
magenta and lapis, the rarest jewels cupped in hand,
cradled carefully, securely, because the body is sublime.
