Shadows Fall

I am sucking at the breast...watching her fidget...wanting her to look at me...me...but finding her attention wandering to what my brother would have looked like...what would he have been like...would he have grown up to be this or that...eyes glazed over as she fantasies about how he would have been...I’m days old but yet I know she is not paying me attention...that she is not quite all there...so I bite down hard to get her attention...she snaps to attention…her breast is already sore...she is tired and ecstatic...joyful but exhausted and just a little uncomfortable with this thing attached it seems to the end of her nipple.

Then a thought hits her...right out of the blue...what if this one...this, baby...is the one...the one who will make everything alright...make her feel the things she thought she would feel as a woman married to a man...surely God has his reason for taking her first child...what if this child is a reward for her devotion...a boon for the humiliation she feels after she has fulfilled her wifely obligation to her husband. The dirt...the filth that seems to come from the inside that she cannot wash off no matter how she scrapes her skin...what if this second chance is just for her...a gift from her God to make everything right. He is special...she was in labour for forty-eight hours, pain like nothing she had ever experienced…then him...her beautiful baby boy...special made...just for her…her eyes are glazed over again...so I bite down hard this time...and for a split-second the mask falls away ...I catch sight of something dark,...wet...hungry and looking right back at me...its stare unblinking...

something that hunts children...eats them...something that is older than mommie and daddie and grandma and will not be denied...its patient... not going anywhere...has no name....but knows mine...I slowly release the nipple...suddenly I am not hungry anymore...suddenly I want her to look away but she‘s not looking at me...it is...something....inside her...she is not even aware of...hitching a ride...the oldest hitchhiker...my mouth goes dry...

mommie’s not back yet...she’s still holding me...the eyes ain’t glazed no more…but she’s not back...I can’t move...crying won’t help even if I could work my throat...and its still just looking at me...so I do the only thing I can...use the only power I have left...I let go my bladder…the pee runs down her arm and then its her eyes looking back at me and she puts me down. I watch her as she puts her breast back in her blouse, she’s talking to herself again and mommie's back...but its too late and doesn't matter....i have seen it...and it knows i saw it...and the fear I feel is going to be with me...from this day forward...and the fear I feel now grows stronger .... wriggles deeper into my beating heart....and seats itself in the space between beats....for I know what it knows. Its there ....patience older than the sun...and one day...Its going to come for me...eat me... and then there'll be nowhere to run.