Born/Borne

Maya has two sons whom she met long before they were born.

On January 16th, Maya conceived her firstborn. She was curled up on the couch, her husband was already asleep, dreaming of what - she didn’t know. At 9:01, the President announced, in his droning tenor, the start of another war. She was tired of the wars these men were drawn to start and never end. But what could she do?

She tiptoed into the bedroom and woke her sleeping husband. He didn’t need to be convinced to wake up for her. She felt a burst in her heart as the baby took hold.

Each phase of her pregnancy was a marvel to her. The nausea, the cravings, the flutterings in her abdomen. It was surreal, really, to think that she had another human inside of her.

She talked to the baby all of the time, narrating what they were doing because she wanted him to be ready for what he would see in this world. She sang along to the radio in a loud tenor. He kicked his little feet against her to the rhythm of ZZ Top. She lovingly teased him for getting so big that her stomach rubbed against the steering wheel, and he was now helping her drive.

She asked him questions about himself. Who are you? Are you kind? Will I love you? Will you love me? But she received no answers - no squirming for approval or knee punches for disapproval. He became unnaturally still when she asked these things, so she stopped asking, fearing that she was hurting him somehow.

One bright day in May, he found a way to show her who he was.

Maya awoke from a nap, stretched luxuriously in the warmth of her bed. As her eyes came into focus, she saw him. Her son.

He was a series of crystal matryoshka dolls - his self nestled into his self, inside his self. His inner smile was fragmented by his glass layers. He floated loftily near the ceilings of rooms, catching the sun as he wobbled a singular parade.

The sun caught him like a prism and sent sparkling colored rays around the room. She stood up and, arms outstretched, put her hand into all of his colors. He was beautiful.

Her second son snuck into being. She didn’t know he was there for a long time. Not until she heard a whisper from the trees in the backyard, A whisper unlike any she had heard before.

Maya and the now-toddler had been splashing in a glorious mud puddle. The baby with bare feet and bare hands, the mud turning his skin into the colors of an ash tree, mottled and calm. The whisper came in a hush, and they both stopped splashing and looked to the sky for the thing that had made the sound, but they saw nothing. The baby, suddenly hungry, or tired, or bored, or scared, started to cry, and she lifted him into her softness and carried him inside.

That night she awoke with a start. Thinking it was because the baby had cried, she sat up, ready to go to him. But he wasn’t crying, and she lapsed into that in-between state where she was neither awake nor asleep. The space that she was afraid to linger in too long.

And it was here in this in-between that she met her second son.

She was standing on the bank of some muddy river she didn’t recognize. It was summertime, and the water of the river ran high and fast. He stood on the bank with her, kicked stones into the water, and refused to show his face. She tried to turn his head toward her, but he twisted away from her and hunched his shoulders against her.

He was beautiful in his mystery, the secrets he wouldn’t show her. All that he would reveal was that he was a boy, a slight blonde boy with a white patch of hair on the back of his head - proof that he was kissed by some god.

After he was born, Maya waited to discover who he was. She was careful not to cajole him into being. He was stubborn with his affection, but quick with a smile.

It wasn’t long after her second son was born that their father drifted into the backrooms of bars and long nights, so it became the three of them. Maya and her sons.

They loved her, those two small boys - more than anyone had ever loved her. They woke her up in the mornings. They woke her up at night. They were always happy to see her. When they discovered something new, they ran to her and demanded explanations. She became the all-knowing one - an expert in their world. For so many years, their days were filled with wonder. With hugs and sticky faces. Running noses. And joy.

As all boys do, the two of them grew taller and further away. Every year seemed to bring more distance. There are days when Maya feels empty, gutted out like a winter squash. Her insides echo with what was once there, for the babies that nestled close, safely inside of her. Sometimes, she feels her breath hitch with sobs so deep she aches with her uncried tears.

They were lost to her now.

Sometimes, when she’s out in the yard, she hears their voices, but they are so faint she has to hold her breath to hear what they are saying. Ghosts of their hands slip in and out of her fingers, fluttering. She yearns to grab them and hold them tight into herself, hold them and keep them forever. But whenever she tried, the hand would turn to sand and wash through her fingers. She has learned not to grab. They are ghosts now and can’t be held.

She’s trapped by her memories, while her sons run free. She stays swaddled by lines drawn in dark arcs around her. She begins and ends, chafing against some corrugated paper shell, sipping small breaths from its dusty confines.

Maya is waiting for someone, maybe a man who draws in his sleep, or a woman who gives everyone the same haircut.

Someone predictable, with no end.

Her sons find her foolish - nothing is predictable, they tell her.