Cataclysm Baby

Cain, Caleb, Cameron

The doctors promised twins but delivered only one baby from my wife’s pummeled womb, her troubled cavity. First the push, push, then the blood, then my mistake-toothed firstborn gnashing in the nurse’s arms: chubby, too chubby, too covered in mother’s gore.

And then my wife continuing to scream.

And then the doctors begging her to stop.

And then what came next, what loose hair, what loose skin, what loose son or daughter, what delta of destruction flowing: my eyes, my wife’s nose, swimming small and recognizable in the flotsam—and then what once-plump arms, what legs covered in bite marks, such expired flesh taken clean off soft baby bones.

In the nursery, our son cried sleepless, sucked frozen pacifiers, pulled at his ears with his fingers, and from behind the glass between us I watched helpless as he chewed his blanket, as he choked past his pillow’s stuffing, unsatisfied.

At home, it is my wife who cries, while our firstborn sucks her tit dry, while his rows of teeth puncture her skin, pock-mark her areola. And how to respond when she complains of his always-hunger, when in an empty voice she begs me to allow the bottle instead?

But look at our son, I say.

Look how tall he’s grown. Look how strong.

Look how he walks, only a month old.

Look how he lifts the icebox lid, how he opens the packaging with his teeth.

Look at his mouth, stained again a ring of red, just like the day he was born.