--I GUESS I SAID THE RIGHT THING THAT WAS THE WRONG THING THAT TURNED OUT TO BE THE RIGHT THING AFTER ALL. 

                                                       

                                              Baby Maker

The silence twitches again. 

Rusted room.  Rusted lungs.  Sofa readjusting itself.  Ants into everything again.  The world gone to cauliflower sawdust. 

But this is a funny story.  Really.  Trust me.

One day a baby grows out of her swollen shoulder.  An infant the size of a small melon.  The color of a beautiful balloon.

She signs, Hello, Gorgeous Girl, on the baby’s chubby blue foot.   

She signs, I hope you’re not a late bloomer, like the moon. 

Then, she signs it to sleep, tapping lullabies onto the baby’s squishy soup head scalp. 

She feeds the baby goldfish and pureed dreams. 

She dresses the baby in sackcloth, trimmed with virgin pink lace.

She tells no one the child is hers, not even the child.

One morning, into the baby’s palm, she signs, I will love you till the final star burns out, which makes the child—now a grandmother—laugh hysterically. 

Mom, the baby-woman-grandmother signs, you’re such a comedian.

Sloped along the bannister, daughter and mother and baby and grandmother, share the last pink sips of sparkling wine, the alcohol lazy and swirling in reverse, fruit-forward, of course.

                                     

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