baggage

We had 6 days together before he left.

I only found the scars later: in a pronounced belly button, under the curves of unusually heavy breasts, in skin stretched taut. It took me even longer to find the invisible scars in cracking memories and thoughts.

I can’t help thinking of him now as it’s my turn to go.

I want him to know: It’s your turn to be left behind. It’s your turn to sit and wait and hope and pray.

But we don’t talk anymore. I don’t think he knows I’m going.

I’ve had 9 months to prepare for my leave-taking. I wonder what I should read into this figure. A pregnant number. Perhaps it’s only now, that I’m a carrying to term of the heartache of his loss.

What kind of abnormal babe it will be, born at the moment I miscarry myself, my friends, my family. It will be shoved into a black Samsonite case, zipped up tightly into a vacuum-pack bag. It will be pulled along a cracked cement pavement. It will be chucked on, upside down, into a carousel, a cargo hold.

But when I arrive on the other side, perhaps I will be told that my baggage has been lost. And my sore shoulders, my tense hands, they will feel relief at not pulling along all the kilograms I should’ve left behind.

And I will weep.

~ by translating for peas on September 20, 2011.