Trip to Mars

 After all that, we still make it to the plane.

We are hurried and exhausted and relieved and looking forward to sitting down in relative comfort. Does anybody else see that this flight is not full?

I guess the others didn't make it through with us.

I'm not sure where we're going. Somebody says Australia. Somebody else says no, it's London. I'm disappointed. I'd rather go somewhere I've never been. Ireland. South Africa. Mars.

Isn't it odd the way people speak more when there are fewer people to receive it? Small talk for small groups. 

I listen to the chatter across seats, across aisles, across rows. These two are married. This one is alone. Those over there are all friends. I'm with some folks from work. The pilot misses his wife.

You wanna know who's on this flight? That guy. He's about five rows back sitting across the aisle from a woman from my office, chatting it up with her one-year-old baby. I can hear the softness in his voice, but I don't look back to see the laughter in his eyes. 

Somebody has texted me, but I can't make out the words.

Ready to launch, someone says. I should strap in, but I can't find my seatbelt. Let me find another seat. Don't take off yet, I'm not safe.

The aisle is cluttered with laundry, packed full so nobody can walk. I have to climb over the seats and eventually I must walk over the laundry, which is putrid and mushy, like a swamp. My bare feet disappear into the piles. It's so difficult to make any progress. I notice there are no snakes.

Hurry up, we need to go, they urge me to find a seat. I move to the back and sit next to the baby. Her mother has disappeared. She is not secured either, so I try to help, and I wonder why she brought this baby, but not the rest of her family. I can't remember the baby's name, so I make one up. Shh, Lily, let's buckle up. She's not a difficult child, but I am not the one she wants. 

That guy says the mother is gone. She fell out the back of the bus.

Did you say bus? We're on a plane. We're going to Mars. 

He gets a text, and I wonder who's texting him right now? We've got other things to worry about. I glance over, but I can't make out the words. I don't think he can either. I realize I've lost my phone. It must be in the other seat. 

Somebody at the front of the bus starts to sing. I know the song. We all sing as we push through a long dark tunnel. The baby cries, but when I turn to soothe her, she has already fallen out the back of the bus. 

Clown Car

The baby couldn't have been mine. I didn't have the necessary equipment to produce another life, so I'd taken a kitchen knife and cut the child out of me. I told myself  some malcontent had put it inside of me as a cruel joke. Maybe they had done it as I slept. It seemed to be the only explanation. Even if I'd had a uterus, there was still the small issue of not having a sperm donor handy.

Ha ha. Time to push out another kid, Nessa. You'll never escape this fate. Sooo funny.

The baby went into the arms of another; I'm not quite sure who, but definitely somebody who would want such a thing. Since it wasn't mine, I should have felt relieved. The child would thrive elsewhere, under the care of a soul who could provide for her. I couldn't even muster up the smallest sliver of want.  Guilt, yes, but not desire, not want.

The haphazard stitching had begun to unravel, and my wound had begun to fester. I pressed my hand against the tender, reddened skin where I had tried to hide the signs of pregnancy from the world. The scar split open, and the baby's fist pushed through the gap from the inside. I took her tiny hand in mine, pulled her out of the wound with slick, red blood flowing freely down my body.

Where did she come from?

As soon as I swaddled her and set her to the side, the next one came shoving herself out of me. And then the next, and the next, and the next...

Sticks, not Stones

I missed you since you had the baby. We hadn't spent much one on one time since your world began to revolve around feeding schedules and diaper changes. I also wanted to come over and spent some time admiring the little stinker, so I did. We sat in the back yard, just like always. I cherished the heavy weight of his warm, sleeping body in the crook of my arm. I could have stared at him all evening. His tiny mouth drew into a circle and he yawned with a little squeak. What talent.

We spent our time gossiping about the drama going on at my job. The weather was perfect. The moonlight bounced off the giant oak, creating a purplish grey hue on the bark. Lightning bugs flitted around like angry pixies. Leaves scampered across the lawn, chasing grasshoppers through the fence cracks.
Your husband kept swatting at those pixies with a stick he'd found on the ground. He was going on and on about some mountain he'd climbed one year. It seems to me there's always something fascinating that he needs to tell us about. His redneck drawl resonates in my mind. I don't know why he threw that stick into the next yard, but he had great aim. A shout from the other side let us know he had landed it right on some poor guy's head.

Why was that funny?

And why did he do it again?

"Watch this," he whispered to us. He scooped up another good sized stick and lobbed it over the fence. Another angry shout got the two of you laughing.

"Stop that," I told him, but he did it again, with an even bigger stick. One right after the other, he kept tossing, and the shouts kept coming.

You raised your face to the moon and howled your laughter skyward. The blues and purples of the moonlight cascaded against your forehead and cheeks. Somehow, it didn't seem real at all. I'd fallen into some surreal dimension where you were okay with this, and I was the only one horrified.

You'd become strange. and I'd become a stranger.

I looked down at the baby to whisper to him a secret. I wasn't going to leave him there with you freaks. But he'd disappeared and I was only holding your long-haired black and white cat.
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