Dear baby

photo by Li Hui

Baby, brave baby boy. How you are missed.

You know that already but I am your mother, and so it’s my right to make sure you hear it, as it is my right to nag your brothers about eating crusts and wearing mittens. Please, sweet liam, indulge your mama. Hear me.

It is the holidays and I am surrounded with your family and it all carries on without you and in some moments I want to scream, furious, make them all stop for you. You swaddle me, rock me, make me still.

Everything is alive, mama, even me.

I’m not supposed to still want to be left alone but I crave empty rooms like an addict.

I know, mama.

Outside this door toddlers wail over the injustice of sharing and not sharing and squashed raspberries and cracker crumbs. They blow noses and giggle at farts and form roaming packs and see imaginary tigers in the basement and I think they have either every idea of how alive they are, or none.

I see, mama.

I love you, liam.

Do you talk to your lost baby? Does s/he talk back?