I Was Her Coffin

I'm sitting on this battered roof, chain-smoking Marlboros and talking to the moon. There is a fiery breeze twirling my skirt, but all I see is a little girl tugging at the hem, mutedly screaming the word "Mommy".  But I couldn't be her mommy, because she is dead.

I'm tempted to take off my skirt-to let it feather down and cover this parched city.
I still have 13 cigarettes and I won't give up until the taste of you retreats from my lungs. I'm thinking that maybe I can smother it, maybe it will just surrender. As long as it's still present, I can't hate you- I can't hate you for what you did to me.

And somehow I know it would have been a girl. She'd be exactly 3 years old today if she'd been born. That's old enough to teach her how to count to ten, to learn new "bigger" words. Old enough to understand a poem I would have written for her-about how wonderful she is to me.

But she is not here and I am barren. My hand is always on my stomache now, and sometimes I think I feel her kicking, until I realize that it's just my heart waiting to be digested. I'm trying to imitate that effortless Christmas-morning smile you give so easily, and to be honest, my jaw is hurting.  

It doesn't feel right to "feel" knowing that she can't. I'm sorry that you're stuck with a white paper bag of a girlfriend. But I'll keep handing you permanent markers to create this transient happiness that I am. I don't know what I'd do without you. I think I could actually hate myself if you hated me too.

I was going to name her "Rowan" because I think that it's a beautiful name. But I never told you that. Sometimes I write it on my skin, tracing it over and over. You always kiss it and ask me what it means. I just tell you that it's nothing, that it's useless, like broken piano keys.  

Now I'm taking a hot bath, but all I really want is to take a cold shower with you-to press my skin against yours, to scream bad words into your shoulder, to hear you tell me "It's gonna be alright".