I Hope I Am Lucky Enough
Content Warnings: child abuse, death, suicide, gore
1.
You invent me out of time. Out of a single dream you might have had a millennia ago. This is ordinary; before this we are stars. Or rather, I am the star. You, you are a neutron star — a collapsed, dark bizarro version of your regular grade celestial object, pulling me newly blown out of the nebula ash into your orbit. From then on, spinning together into the shadows, revolving and reflecting only each other. Now, reborn again, we descend to Earth. In a body, I am a baby made of weak gravity. And you are still much the same.
2.
You are Mother Fox. One evening, the cubs are starving, so you leave us in the den alone to go hunt. In your absence, the bloodhounds get us. The Englishmen shoot us dead. You come home to a massacre and in your splintering rage, you vow revenge. You take rites no animal should. You transform yourself into a machine charged by spite. The night cloaks your cunning form as you steal into the village to bring Death back to every doorstep, relentless, until the humans learn your pain too. You won’t remember this in your next life but your body will. And I will be made to remember, every time you mistake me for an enemy.
3.
You lose me on the expressway. There is bent metal, and there is crushing, and I am gone. Simple as that.
4.
In this one I manage to grow old. But you do not ever meet me. I wonder my whole life who you might be. Though even in the lives where I do get to meet you, I wonder the same thing.
5.
You are my ever-present torturer. You lay me down on the operating table, you’re all bent-over in your fake scrubs and surgical mask, playing doctor even though I’m not ill. And then you do it — you plunge the scalpel into the plane of my chest. My screams are muffled by the gag; I convulse against the restraints on my limbs. Don’t worry, goes your honeyed voice. The knife runs deeper. I’m just testing you, I’ll stitch you back up right after I’m done. You make good on your promise. I don’t know what’s worse — the initial cruelty, or the gentle touch of your hands mending my skin back together again. Or that this is not the first time.
Actually, this is how we are across all our universes. You strike me with your own hand for reasons I can’t comprehend. Out of guilt, you also nurse me back to health. Assuaging yourself that you do this for both of us.
6.
You call me “son” out of the womb. I excel at sports. You praise me for my excellence, which is rare in these worlds. But I am still wild at heart, a feral kit, and you try to subdue me. We are animals no longer, you screech, we have formalities to follow. Human masks to embody. The lines are drawn in the sand so we still go to war. The day I grow taller than you, I remember all our past lives. I walk into the river with stones in my pockets. Obliteration is the kindest outcome for one of us.
7.
You teach me how to draw. How to grip the charcoal like you might hold a lover, how to cover my hands with work. How to shade life into a new, ruddied cheek.
Out of everything, I enjoy this exercise the most. You show me how to create — how to bring life into the world, out of my fallow body.
8.
In many lives you do actually kill me. This is not a metaphor; in so many lives I almost come close to it. The ones in which I do survive it’s because I attempt the impossible — I become my own mother. I do what you taught me: how to create something out of nothing. So much of me is already gone, but I can at least recall the smudge of charcoal. The feathering strokes. I remake myself into a being that can exist in the world. I take all of the pieces you broke me into and rebuild myself divine.
9.
In one life we grow old together. I am hoping that I am lucky enough that it is this one.
10.
I am at your hospital bed, holding your hand. You have just started calling me “son” and together, we reminisce, we joke about old times. There is a world of difference between us, and there always will be. But sometimes that does not matter. I ask you, “Do you remember the life where we were foxes?” and you reply, “Yes, son, that sounds familiar,” and I tell you, “That was my favorite one, even if it was tragic, even if it ended all bad, because that was when you wrapped me in your tail and kept me warm, and that was when you used your teeth against everyone but me, and even though times were hard, we were alive for a time,” and you squeeze my hand, telling me, “Yes, son, that sounds about right.”
