you wait for something to come from the dark. Something to come out of the dark? No.
You wait
for something.
Some one?
I’ve been waiting in the dark for a life time, a generation. I’ve born you a granddaughter you will never know. Then again, I’ve never known you either. This relationship we have is so intimate and yet you’ve never known its heat, its groove. How deep it runs, how you haunt me, bring me still to tears. Now I have listless days with my newly born daughter, six months old. The past two have been amazing. Wake up, some crying the first day, the second lazy. It seems as if I had been talking to her all day.
All of you will never know her. None of you will and as cruel as that sounds, I want nothing to do with any of you, not uncles or godmothers or cousins or nieces. I do not care, this is the dark gift I’ve taken from our shared blood and I’ll put it between us and it will grow and I will fester it, I will tend to it, I will be ever vigilant to keep you away from me, from us, from this little bit of life I want to keep for my own.
Monthly Archives: September 2004
at least an end to endings
you’d like for this to be the end of it. An end to beginnings, or at least, an end to endings. An end to the fear of the end, of endings, perpetual and continual, throughout the night, between breaths, in the long silence that falls between.
I’d like to have apologized to you because I had made such a demon out of you, but the truth of it is, holding my daughter, seeing her seeing me and knowing me, knowing that I am someone apart from anyone else and her mother is someone set even further apart from anyone else, seeing her smile when she first sees me in the morning…
No, I have no apologies for you and if I could, I’d let you die again and again without a word to me.
Three years ago tomorrow, the world changed. It is much more frightening and grim, unsure. The economy is faltering along, we are trying to buy a house. It’s a struggle: we found a home in an area that we really like and is convenient for both us, close to my parents, and just when we thought we were on our way, that our only problems were how we were to juggle the documentation of assets and debt to income ratios with the mortgage bank, the seller wants to uproot two trees.
Our lawyer says, well, people taking light fixtures is normal, but trees? Well, that’s certainly unique.
So, of course, your father’s reaction is pure spite. Sure you can have the trees, but knock off 2 grand off the price. And as a matter of fact, while we’re at it, why don’t you spend about another 10 grand on the repairs and replacements the engineer recommends and if you’re thinking of taking those swings that you’ve featured so prominently, well guess what, that’s another 2 grand.
The contract was supposed to be today as well.
Ba’s Birthday Note
Dear Baba,
Today we celebrate not one birthday, but three: one for the loving father who has provided and cared for us through physical toil and emotional strength. The other is for the husband, who’s kindness and patience has laid the most solid of foundations for a long time future of love and security. And more importantly, we celebrate the birthday of the man, always quick with laughter and wit, the very soul of this house.