Fig trees. Choice begets loss. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, my body’s drying up. Quite nearly geriatric, as they

say. I hold children like watermelon—strained, seasonal. Children roam

 

the restaurant, restless for some misery. Their fathers carry scissors, snip

choking hazards into inchworms. Good mothers have long, flowing

breasts and trust their doors. The children and the fathers and the mothers all have

 

futures. They dream of walls with strong skeletons to pen in loose

desires. They dream of furniture with soft lines to pen in their sharp walls.

The children dream of I-shaped mylar balloons that belong

 

to them and them alone. Once I peeked into a bassinet and got

paranoid that their face looked like mine. Now I don’t

concern myself, just imagine bassinets as reliquaries on wheels—

 

someone else’s portable fear. But I still find myself lost

in the CVS, yelping in the family planning and incontinence aisle.

A fig wrinkles: a spacious two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment condo rental

 

near Costco with an UPPAbaby Vista V3 Stroller. The stroller refuses

to collapse, disrupting brunch; the stroller refuses to carry me, disrupting

nap time; the stroller disintegrates. The mothers are no longer

 

taking questions—they haven’t forgiven me for questioning their sense

of authority, their door-closing abilities. I share a cigarette with a sweaty, shaking

father, ask, what do you dream of in the blunt shadow of morning? He snips

 

an enoki mushroom into the shape of a man—turned sideways, it’s a new

Lexus luxury SUV with custom interiors. I peel back

the bassinet canopy with a renewed sense of purpose to reveal a shriveled

 

thumb encased in a baby’s silk bonnet. Behind walls that seep

roaches and uncertainties of various sizes, a door that threatens, I

undress the thumb down to the bone and suck.