Blue Baby

I stand in the foyer

Asking myself

From the other side of consciousness

“Why am I here?”

I swore I would never return here

You appear in the corner, silent

The baby crawls over the smooth knots

Of the heart pine floors I swept

So many moons ago

___________________________

This is not my home anymore

And neither are you

I can feel your hollowness

“This is not safe. You are not safe.”

Terror washes over me

The baby coos and slaps his hands

Against the turquoise walls I painted

So many moons ago

_________________________

You stare at me with

Black eyes, piercing

As though I was the ghost

In your house

Challenging me from the other side of the void

The betrayal feels real again

My womb feels unhealed again

The baby is crawling away from me

Towards something on the floor

____________________________

I remember the time

After the hurricane

When we reconciled

I cleaned your house in the heat

Drinking from the rancid, humid air

Roach shit and trash strewn everywhere

It had only been two months since I’d been gone

“How could you live like that?”

My gaze on you, intent

Like a long lost obsession

I see the baby picking up a dark morsel

Out of the corner of my eye and guiding it to his mouth

_________________________

My mind leaps and rushes towards the baby

My body lags behind in slow motion

I make it to him

Fishing and scooping his mouth with my fingers

I retrieve the remnants of a pellet

Roach poison, a small cylinder

I grab him and run over to the kitchen sink

“Wash his mouth out”

My heart races

I scream

“Call an ambulance!”

Your body lags to action

You just stand there in the corner, silent

____________________________

I stand over the sink and suddenly

Water begins rising from the drain

All the drains, all the toilets

Water is spilling all over the floor

Rising up to my ankles

The house is dark

From out the window rain beats down

As if it is trying to prove a point

I look at the baby cradled in my arms

His eyes are closed

I shake his tiny body with my hand on his heart

As you stand in the corner, silent

____________________________

The water is at my hips now

The flood rages

The terror inside me is radiating now

It’s too late

“They can’t get to him.”

The baby in my arms is limp

Nothing

My heart, my soul, my love, my life

My blue baby

Gone

As the unbearable weight of the water

Crushes this God-forsaken house

And delivers me into the flood

Still, you stand there in the corner, silent