Promises were meant to be broken.
Right?
But if that were the case, then why are they made in the first place? For us to fall into a false sense of security, a bottomless abyss of potential regret? Did the sobbing woman you stumbled upon know, on her wedding day, that her husband would come home one day with smeared red lipstick when she only owned nude? When my father left on the eve of my sixth birthday and vowed to come back, was he aware that he was the one breaking down?
Well, for months leading up to that blustery October dawn, we were promised a lot of things.
We were promised happiness. Tears. The best day of our lives. For so much love to flood our hearts, we'd have no choice but to pour it all out. We were promised arguments and caffeine cravings and a whole lot of trouble.
We were promised a cry that would piece the thin air, followed by the silent congratulations of nurses.
What we weren't promised, however, was the stillness of your chest that would haunt me for a lifetime.
Where was the fluttering of your eyelids, so I could announce to everyone and anyone that you were dreaming?
Why didn't your little fingers curl around mine in what should've been the sweetest moment of motherhood?
How could such a beautiful soul be tainted by life's angry marks and lashes, like ink staining a fresh white rose?
Like your existence was a cruel joke?
A spiderweb of capillaries tinted your cheeks blue, and the wavy tufts on your head resembled the swirls of orange and gold outside.
My finger grazed every inch of your skin. I didn't think about your father who'd slipped outside and slid against the door to my ward, his head in his hands, so I couldn't see him cry. I didn't think about the family in the ward next to mine, laughing because they've received an angel from God Himself. I didn't think about your twelve year old sister who, upon hearing the news a week ago, attempted to jump off the twenty-third floor of our apartment.
I placed my hand over your heart but I didn't think about its lack of a rhythm.
I didn't think about how I was a failure.
About how I couldn't bring my own child into the world, kicking and whimpering and breathing.
I didn't think.
I still don't.
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I held you for three and a half hours straight, until your porcelain skin matched the blizzard that would come when fall bled into winter. The numbness that had consumed me faded into nothing.
I have nothing.
I am nothing.
I love you.
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I asked them to wheel me outside, where the first wisps of aureate sunshine could illuminate your face. Your head lolls against my shoulder as I get up; the burning in my abdomen was nothing compared to the shattering of my spirit, and together, we enter the forest of my eternal serenity.
I now know that we make empty promises, not because we are afraid of commitment, but because we hang on to the lost bits of hope when everything is crashing down. We know that the rubble will drown our screams. We know that there's no escape from the suffocating ash, from the fire in our core, and yet we shield our hearts with our hands, as if someone will dig through the debris and bring us to the safety of tomorrow.
Because my father never did come back, and all you'll ever be to them is the dead baby I loved, once upon a time.
