Author's Note

Hi there. This is where I'm going to be posting my writing, or at least the things that don't belong on my blog.

Here's the breakdown: The blog is (and always has been) non-fiction: true stories, personal asides, and musings about my life, my activities, or my ideas. In short: The blog = me.

On the other hand, this site, if all goes according to plan, will be where I post the rest of it -- i.e. fiction. Or things that are mostly fiction. Or partly fiction. Or things that might not be entirely fictional. You know, the things that I need to get out of my head by writing down, and will then pretend that they're fiction
, regardless of the degree of truth.

So, assume that nothing here is real. If you think it is, best keep that to yourself. (And if you think it's about you, well, just remember what Carly Simon said.)

And now, on with the show.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Roses

(cross-posted at Blah Blah Blog)

Please don't give me roses.

Don't get me wrong: Roses are a beautiful tradition, a lovely gesture. But they're just that: a gesture. They smack of trying too hard and yet, of not trying hard enough. Of trying to impress with the cost and the ostentatiousness, but not trying to find out who I am or what I really like.

Roses are too lofty, too rife with metaphor, with their soft petals amongst the thorns. They're for apologies, for Mothers' Day and Valentine's Day. They're for pageant winners, prom dates, and brides.

I am none of those things. Give me something from the earth. Give me daisies or tulips or sunflowers that fill the room with color. Give me the gardenias that remind me of my mother. Give me the night-blooming jasmine that scented the evenings of my childhood.

But please don't give me roses.

What Could Have Been But Never Was

I think about him every once in a while. How old he would be by now. (Seven.) Who he would have looked like. (You, but with greenish-blue eyes and freckles like me.) What he would think was funny. (Puns and silly words, like my mom.) What songs he would want me to sing when I put him to sleep. (Elvis, like when my dad used to sing me to sleep.) What he would like to read. (Everything, just like his mom.) But these thoughts bring little solace, and I can’t say the words out loud. No one else knew, you’re long gone, and I’m left with nothing but what-ifs and could-have-beens.

I would have been such a good mom. Everyone always tells me that I’m a natural. I know that it’s a compliment, but sometimes it feels like a smack in the face – no, worse, a kick to the gut. I see my nephew and my cousins’ and friends’ children, and no matter how much I love them – and trust me, I do love them – I am just so helplessly aware that there is one missing, one that I would have loved so much more than any of the others because he would have been mine. My perfect baby.

I know it probably didn’t seem so at first, but I didn’t really fault you for leaving after it happened. We were just so sad together all of the time: even the good moments were tinged with tears. You were so depressed, and I felt so powerless. Plus, on some level, the fact that I had been so scared and was more-than-a-little relieved after it was all over seemed to make you feel hurt and angry, but you never said anything, and instead, suffocated me with your stormy silence. Maybe you were feeling that I wanted it to end the way that it did, that I never wanted to have a child, or worse – that I never wanted to have your child. But it wasn’t that – it was that I felt like we were too young and that we had so much time and that we would be so much more prepared the next time it happened. If only there had been a next time.

I came close to telling someone about it once, but I caught myself in the nick of time. After all, he was our dream – our secret – and then, suddenly, our ghost. And now he’s nothing, and we’re nothing, and more often than I’d like to admit, I’m nothing but a mere specter of what I had been before what could have been but never was.