In pictures, 4 x 6, you looked soft and round. My bright blue eyes looked back at me and I cringed. You had been inside me, then taken out.
Every week I went to the public library to look for the e-mails from seanandkath89. I wondered if I could look at me: different, young, long, and small years from now.
There was always one sentence before your picture.
21 pounds now, can you believe it!
Sean and Kath
Baby's first hayride, doesn't it look like she's having fun!
Sean and Kath
Eating apple sauce, isn't she a messy eater!
Sean and Kath
There was no question mark, my response unnecessary. Each time, I wrote back 'Thank You for the pictures.'
I didn't ever write any more, but I thought about the questions that weren't questions. Out- side of the grocery store I picked up pumpkins, trying to guess how much they weighed. I imagined holding you. I bought apple sauce to eat with my potato chips. I imagined the cashier knew me, you. Asked questions about us both. I would tell them about Baby's First Hayride. I do not know the cashier. She says only Debit or Credit? Each time it is the same.
Then the pictures stop. I was relieved. Until you came back. Not soft, not round. Brown curls gone in place of a flowered headscarf. Suddenly you had no color, sharp edges. They gave you a few months and I found myself frantic. I didn't want to see you old as me, but this was different. I wanted to hold you, knit you sweaters to cover your sharpedges. Aren't you mine?
I wish I could have kept you inside forever. When the e-mails became less frequent, I feared the worst and I was right. Three months went by, no seanandkath89.
My imagination ran me wild. I imagined an empty space inside of me. Room for a shelf for you to sit on. Your flesh dissolves into mine, your bones hook onto mine in a complex laby- rinth- no one can detach us. Protection.
A letter finally arrives-- no picture. Your funeral three days before.
I visit your grave alone, and you are buried beneath an apple tree. I cannot see you and I cannot hold you. You are so far below me, in unknown ground. No more soft photographs, 4 x 6 or any size at all.
I start to claw at the ground, trying to dig you out, trying to save you.
After little dirt uncovered, I realize it will do no good to see you. That I gave you up a long time ago. That our bones will never fit, there is no home inside me. No magical way to latch and melt us back together.
I will never be able to guess at just how beautiful you would have been. Tears, and time to sit and think under your apple tree, dirt under my fingernails.