As the train barrelled north through late February, our bellies full of meat and wine, you recounted to me how your aunt had pulled you aside to say, “Your children will be beautiful.” I chuckled — we were not together — hoping my lips could push the wish from my cheeks, that, too, hid a far sinister truth:
I have seen our babies.
The charming little pebbles, with their bedevilling smiles and easy coos. I watched them grow out of hand. Biting, leaping, romping, wreaking, spiking, greasing, stomping, leaching, in their magnificence, they became disfigured and alive. They crane their necks to lay their fingers on what next they can possess — How cruel my foolishness! To think we could read them off my line, only to leave them with a vocabulary far more vile. They learned to sprawl like royalty, And consume with manners hardly dignified.
Those delightful wastes of space.
How could we give birth to such creatures?
I cannot be the architect of such a tragedy, so do not invite me in, do not ask me for my hand unless it is to burn it in an arrangement of all my organs. There is something in the seed — Let it die and be damned! Darling, I am not going to let it leak into you. May we share dinner and a station but never the same avenue.
Leave a Reply