i was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. blue and silent. (always). when doctors ask my mom when my anxiety began, she says it was in that moment. she swears my instinct is claustrophobia. i knew what dying felt like before i had the chance to cry. before i had a name or footprints on a page. i was born late and huge, an extra ten days and almost 9 pounds. i'm tall, much taller than my mom, almost eye-level with my dad, i'm out growing them. and yet, i'm still attached. i cried yesterday, started to panic because my mom left. i couldn't go with her to new orleans, i have to stay 'home'. i told her, 'it's funny how often you leave, considering you're the one who forced me to move down here, and now i'm the one who has to stay.' she said, 'you can leave, you don't have to stay.' but i need her. she's suffocating me here, but i need her.

While most folks celebrate the 4th of July, it’s the 5th when I remember having a dream come true.

Many years ago, when my heart drove me to explore various places around the world where I might find “my baby Maria,” I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple journey.  As a single parent, my options were limited in where I could adopt a baby girl.  Mexico appeared to be an easy possibility, notwithstanding all the red tape, reference letters and endless forms needed to apply.  Several months later, I got a call saying the program had closed for no apparent reason, and they wished me the best of luck.

I then learned Honduras offered an adoption program, and I even had a chance to communicate with another Mom who successfully added a daughter to her family.  While having a little baby girl was my wish, when I received a photo and description of a one- year-old, I accepted that she was the one chosen for me. That was until I received a letter apologizing for the agency’s mistake of giving this girl to someone else, and sorry to say, there were no more children available in the foreseeable future.

A co-worker once called me tenacious. It may have been this never-give-up attitude or very strong belief there was a plan for me, that kept me going.  Paraguay popped up in my research with an adoption office in rural Minnesota.  After completing a third set of paperwork and non-stop praying, I hoped this would be my destination. A photo and description of a beautiful three-month old baby girl, whose birthmother’s name was Maria, felt like a sign from above.  The following Christmas Day, I found myself in Paraguay, where following a knock on my hotel door, my Maria appeared.

On July 5th I will celebrate the day 35 years ago when this adoption was finalized, and Maria officially became my daughter.  Every ounce of effort was rewarded, and I’ll always give thanks for all who helped make my dream come true.

When she was little she was a dollop of goodness. She was little but a bundle of good tidings. She was little but fierce. She had eyes that spoke louder than her apparent innocence. She was little but she was large. She was little but she was 'all that'. She was little but she was her mother's pride and joy. She was little, but she had her own mind, and she was serious about it. She was tiny but she was smart. She was little but she was the next best thing. She was truly a gift from God.

There are nine obvious holes in me

Nine liaisons with the universe

I hope to leave humanity

With nine, no more, in my hearse

There are two for catching drumbeats

Tympanically delivered

From a world of broken heartbeats

Before I'm umbilically scissored

Four holes I have are front and near

Two that breathe my share of air

Two are for leaking my salty tears

All on my face, arranged in pairs

There's one that comes with taste and suction

Where both my needs and wants will meet

With compensatory eruption

When overindulging the Great Teat

There's one ending vermiform

Between my legs--who knew?

When it grows up, it'll fusiform

And corkscrew more holey people, too

One hole that's truly splendid

Alleged to be a one-way street

Doth render me truly open-ended

Without it, obstructed and incomplete

Extra holes are dangerous

They bleed or gape or drain

Bodily fluids that raise a fuss

'Cause you won't get 'em back again

The impossible in front of me, trying desperately to pull myself across the floor. Everything is so far away. Nothing is easily in reach. Pulling always pulling. Muscles not ready for it. Brain just in development. All of the effort possible and you end up just kicking your legs in the arm. All of your weight pressed into your belly. It is all you know. You miss the warm and the wet. I miss the warm and the wet. The safe place where you didn’t have to work so hard. Where you did not have to train. All you had to do was float and be consumed by the comfort.

But that time has passed, and now you spend your days pulling and straining, just like me.

Rocking. It is the constant that surrounds me. Rhythm.

Both personal and impartial and uncertain in its constancy. It is a movement that occurs as the byproduct of all things in motion, myself as well, no matter how still I try to make my mind or body or the article on which my feet have stopped.

Crib, seesaw, or chair, or open field...

Age has relevance, as a descriptor of events, such as measure of day.

It does not define me, inside nor out, and rocking reveals nothing other than the reassurance that minutes are passing and there is yet the potential for end.

Or change of pace, or a similar continuation.

Whatever the tempo, the rocking is the meter surfacing in my awareness.

Like breathing. Heart beating.

I am ancient.

I am infantile.

I am cradled,

within living rock.

07.31.2024

Completely Open Ended... challenge @Last

Once upon a time there was a boy who didn't know anything of the world. He tried his best to understand everything, every conversation, every single phrase that was spoken to him. No matter what he did, he could never understand. Abram was his name.

One day Abram was walking down the street when he saw a cat. She had whiskers that looked too big for her and her tail hung at an angle. Abram put down his stuff and walked over to the cat. She shied away at first, but Abram waited. He waited until the cat was no longer scared. He waited until her tail curled up and her fur seemed to smoothen. He then reached out his hand. Instantly the cat ducked but she moved closer to him none the less. She was purring. He found his grip and ran his hand down along the cat's back. She arched and dug her claws into the ground. Abram smiled. This cat had not had a good meal in a long time. She purred at his touch but her hunger was more. She sniffed over to the ground where Abram had dropped his packages.

The cat nuzzled her way into a parcel of meat, licking at its sides. Abram quickly stopped her, but couldn't help breaking off a chunk of the bread he was bringing home for dinner. With a last goodbye, Abram heard the bell tolling and headed home. He hoped to see that black cat again yet if anything had ever been so unreal he couldn't remember it. It was as if a phantom had appeared and stolen his brain for a moment then set within it a cat. A cat that could not go away. It haunted him night and day. In taking a little bread for the cat he had carved himself a mind of steel, forever thinking of a cat who will never come back, just as if she had died that day. The cat was gone but she was forever in the little child's brain, an echo of a long gone day. A day when, for a moment, the world made sense.

I saw a horse today inside the supermarket, wearing the most peculiar attire. I was shuffling through the aisles with my cart full yummy processed goods when I saw it in the produce section, donning a white lab coat coated in a thick layer mud and lab goggles tightly secured with a rubber strap, standing on its back hooves and pushing the cart forward with its front hooves. I stopped and stood with a dropped jaw and wide-eyes. The horse, minding its own business, curls back its top lip as it eyes the corn cobs and prudently picks out the freshest cobs-- whose freshness can be determined moist green husks and fresh silk tassels-- gently with its front teeth and drops it in the cart before moving on to the apples. I have to give it to em, that horse knows how to pick its corn. Anyhow, I looked around to gauge others' reaction to this unusual sight. Certainly someone who works at the store has already contacted some sort of authority to have the horse removed. I mean this must be violating some sanitary code or something-- its a fucking horse in a grocery store, not to mention all the dried mud flaking off its coat and getting everywhere! But no one was even batting an eye at the horse, they all just went about their day, crossing items off their list and comparing prices between name brand and generic products! I followed the horse for a while as it shopped. No one else ever even so glanced at the bipedal, mad scientist-looking horse as it clopped through the store. Eventually I stopped following the horse. It had been an two hours since I had arrived at the store and I had work tomorrow morning, so I went to self-check out and then went home.

I was in the car

she was in labor

my grandmother

who now has dementia

driving like a racehorse

on too many steroids

my uncle

her brother

said, I thought

for sure

this baby would have

been born

outside the house

in the yard

my mother laughed

she held her belly

tightly

I came out

in a rush of

blood and happenstance

I am thirty-two

sitting next to

my infant self

in the backseat

of a Buick

I woke up

after I saw myself

my bald baby head

coming out

I was

immediately conscious

once again

are dreams always

in the past tense

the fact that

once awake

they are gone

we are left

with the residue

of them

an umbilical cord

tied to the future

a remembrance

while still in utero

born again

a rebirth

but never sure

in which reality

I am my true self

which reality

do I live in now

Open your eyes.

What do you see?

A mouth and a nose

Smiling down on me

You look sort of old

But you look like me

Some thoughtful, ancient

Miserable me.