Daniel

My mother grips a baby-soft swaddled bundle, 

Pale blue, embroidered with smiling rabbits,

her head haloed by hairspray and nineties volume. 

My brother perches birdlike on my father’s shoulders:  

Skinny, cautious, curious.

This photo cannot ever exist:

The baby boy never lived outside my mother. 

 

I was born four months after that little boy was due, 

Making our timelines impossibly incompatible.

 

In our most recent family photograph,

They are all older: my mother grayer,

My father smiling with crinkly eyes,

My brother exuding confidence 

As only a twenty-three year old man can. 

But the biggest difference is me, a daughter, 

existing where the other boy does not (cannot) 

 

with my mother’s arm draped gently around my waist 

protective like a warm bed in cold wintertime. 

 

I asked her about him once:

He was a boy, she tells me. 

Named Daniel.

How could she know?  I ask.

I could just tell, she says.

I wonder if she would go back if she could

Save him, forgo the possibility of me.

 

People don’t question grieving mothers

Especially not their own.