Childless Hips

I left my house today, balancing my computer on my hip as if it were a baby.

But my childlessness cried back at me.

Why the codependency?

Why be with a man who doesn’t want to share my DNA?

Why do my bones know he’d not be a good father?

Do I even know what a good father looks like?

In my new monastic order, God is a loving father.

Ya know, it’s hard to trust that when the trust has been beaten out of you.

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When your father wanted you gone before you were born, but failed.

Bloody rags as evidence, not of childbirth but abuse.

Oh yeah, and he’s a doctor by the way.

And yet, here I am. Alive and … well, maybe not all that well.

Where’s the pride in having me, where’s the apology?

“Sorry I wanted you dead, honey. Maybe I could’ve been a good father.”

Growing up his patients used to tell me, “he loves you so much”.

I stared back blankly. What love, I thought, how would you know.

Until finally he had a glimmer, an apology to his own brother who he’d beat to the drum of his mother’s request.

Not a fresh start, a stinky old fucking gross pond scum start. At least clean out the fucking dead fish.

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I’m about to need to work again, 2 hours late and clickity clacking along for the money.

One day maybe my job will make a man look at me and think “wow that’s my girl” I’m proud of her clickity clack.

Here I am, paying attention to my computer like it was my baby.

How could I be a good mother if I don’t even know what a real baby is.

In middle chool, I was given a plastic baby, although it was the last thing I wanted.

Did the people who gave me the plastic baby even know they’re reinforcing its deadness to me?

Child free by choice or childless not by choice? Neither. Childless by Default. The choice I’m LEFT WITH.

Despite all the work, despite the therapy, despite the prayer.

These hips don’t lie.