Everything you've ever known is what you know. Love letters. Hate mail. All those things you wrote about birds and other things with wings. Trapped. Not trapped. On stairs. Without. punctuated and unhinged. Hinged. whatever.  none of it matters now. the thing about being a parent is. what. That something that hurts is prescient. no. crushing. no. unknowable unnameable crushing. If I was meant to be the mother of things, perhaps I would be. But I am not. Even though I have felt the crushing feeling unknowable pain of the knowing. At times. It is not. And this is, absolutely not. It is waiting. And crushing. And painful stupid knowledge. The kind I've already learned. Too many times. To steer clear of. To look out for. To not fight, into the cold hard darkness, hoping somehow to find the light.

I don't have love letters for this. I've written them. In harsh sobs. And soft sounds. And regrettable voicemail messages left for people who never wanted to hear them. That's where this is. Somewhere that happened, but deleted. For the record.