I Have All Your Children
They fell out of their rooms. It is the scent of me — coral and deep sun. Ocean and seaweed. Everything they have never known, all mysteries untangled.
I do not want your children. I have no need of them. They crowd my thoughts, pull my skirt. But if I returned — with their tiny feet pattering behind my footfalls — you would slit my neck. So I keep them. Or they keep me.
It is difficult to feed forty children. To watch over them. To give them beds. We’ve made our own slight village, the littles ones and me. Deep in the forest. On moss and in cribs of leaves. We eat black berries and starve the birds. Bugs are full of nutrition. The children created their own sort of society, without any of my input. I would love to sleep. To face silence once more.
I should have never walked through your town, but I heard your church bells, the calls of your men. It had been lonely at the shore. I wanted touch. I did not want children.
Today I feed thirty-nine of them. I cannot know where the fortieth went. My mother always said I was no mother.
Forgive me. Your gardens are empty. There is no laughter in your streets.
I have a plan. I must burn.
Then the children will disperse. And if there is still my scent, it will live in the ash, in the dust. I will exist in every place, spread in gales, and your children will follow me, will break back into your homes, crawling on their knees. Seeking the ocean salt, the sand, as night seeks land.
Matchstick on my tongue. Kindling in my hands.
* * * * *
The Warmth and I
I have loved the ghost. At first, no. I became embolized when it brushed against my skin. Many minutes became many hours that I lost, unable to move out of fear.
But the ghost and I became something else. Now, I make a place for it at the table. I turn to it when I watch the news, comment on the weather. I cannot see it, but I always know where it is. Warmth — that is the ghost.
On November 13th, my ex-husband found me. His footfalls on the deck’s stairs crunched snow. A distinct stride, his left foot dragging. Years ago, speeding out of the drive, I ran over it. I was always running. And he was always just behind.
I moved too slow for the knife in the locked drawer. And the backdoor I had left unbolted. All my latches turned the wrong way.
He came in fast. My fingers searched for whatever might have a crude edge, came up with a wooden spoon. He smelled sickly sweet, his hands bare.
He lunged five steps towards me, and then halted. His snarl was not unlike a dog’s. But then he backed out of the door, his eyes still on me. We did not exchange one real word, just sounds, animal, desperate for separate things. The room felt hot, like summer.
Let me tell you how to love a ghost. Give it a name. Give it a bed. Give it a birthday. November 13this fine. Do not doubt the miracles of love, wherever they come from, with whatever heat they touch your cheek. The world is lonely enough.