He
was not there when what happened, happened; arriving to paperwork already
complete and filed on them both: his partner and the deracinate child annulled
from her haemhorraging womb. He put his name to nothing, walking from the
hospital with her few effects in a refuse sack repeat-printed with the words “PATIENT’S CLOTHING”, his unyielding
image of the entire day nothing more than the sight of two young girls
side-by-side in the car park, each walking backwards to the other and his perception momentarily
confused as to which one approached, which moved away.
This
comes again decades hence when, raising his head from his mother’s grave, he
sees two tiny infants, hand-in-hand and young enough yet to exhibit no defining
gender, running backwards between the stones, and laughing, the poetry of all
life’s transient blood contained within their every footstep.
