4.

I dreamed there is a baby. A nebulous, composite baby-an implication of a baby really because I don’t see his face. He’s vulnerable and sweet. I love him like your brother. There is some contention as to whether he is really mine, but I covet him. He is alive outside of my body. We are under siege. I hide us in an attic, down in a burrow, the deepest jungles, but we are found. Not caught, just on the run again for the next hiding place. I am trying to stop the inevitable, what already happened. I’m going back in time, fighting to keep you safe. My dreaming mind is in denial. I had read about this. There are phantom cries, shadows that move which you assign logically to the person who should be making them. And then you remember, there is no baby.

Back to you: soon there will be no trace. I never made your milk. My skin is ambiguous as to how many babies it has carried, certainly one, could be two or more. No new stretch marks this time. There is nothing to pack up. We had hand-me-downs, second boy. There was a crib I ordered, after you had died, before I knew. I tried to cancel but it was too late. I chased the delivery man down, wailing: take it back! Why, he said confused? The baby DIED! The hurried shuffling, mumbled apologies while they carted the box away. But I want to tell it again, rephrase it. MY BABY DIED. The refrain in my head “oh my baby, oh my baby”. So now it’s just our life, as it was before. Not empty furniture, just empty days ahead that you were supposed to fill. Life with something extra, something gone.

Dreams again: the tidal wave, of course. But this time something new. It has left a 60 foot dune between the beach and the world behind it. I’m on the beach, looking up at the barrier where someone has a rope for me to climb. But I have a choice, to scavenge the sand for pieces of wreckage, quickly fading in the tide, or climb to safety before the next wave arrives. The decision is suspended; I wake up. Then I remember, there is no baby.