The Lucky Daughter

by Mariama Lockington

 

this baby will be yours

the adoption paper read

finally, a daughter to call her own

mama cried with relief

cracked her swollen toes

the dead baby

the one before me

hovering over her head

a bundle of bloody moss

—

for the first three months

they were afraid to put me down

coddled like henry viii’s only heir

i slept on a throne

made of my parent’s pale flesh

shit in cloth diapers

rode around town

in a sheep-skin lined buggy

—

what if he had stayed

my birth father

gotten down on one knee

asked my mother to marry him

what if there had been

a square cut diamond

a house just outside atlanta

with a porch swing

i think about that house

a red brick, two bedroom

with sunflowers in the kitchen

what if i had grown up there

a southern girl

a georgia peach

—

then there is the woman

who comes up to me

after a reading and says

you must be so grateful

your mother decided not to have an abortion

and even though i believe

in a woman’s right to choose

i start to think about what if

i had been an empty inside of a woman

what if i had been her hunger

the ache that would keep her up at night

—

and then i think about

musclebonefluidchance

what if his sperm had missed her egg

i go back further and further

until i am entangled

in all the wonderings

no emergency exit

no one to say

stop baby, it ain’t worth it

so i think about holes

what’s broken what’s undone

i think about trees

about limbs

what if there were no mothers

no women

what if i had been born a planet

with hips of gas and rock

what if i inherited the dark orbit

of galaxy with no name

—

of course there is always the dead baby

the one before me

cradled in mama’s arms

she alone brings me back

how she would have had my name

but a different complexion

how mama would have thrown her

gypsy birthday parties every year

taken photos of her

watering eggplants in the garden

how she would have tried to fight off

the spell of mama’s violin

lulling her to sleep each night

how they would have loved her

with the love that was then leftover for me

how to be grateful for a story

that began with everyone

losing

someone they loved