Soldier Sailor

by Claire Kilroy

I tell you all the time that I love you, but it’s not enough. I love you, yes? I love you, okay? I love you, are you listening? Do you understand?

Do you know what I would do for you? I hope not. What would I not do, is the question. The universe careens around us and I shield your sleeping body with my arms, ready to proclaim to the heavens that I would kill for you: that I would kill others for you, that I would kill myself.

Yes, yes, I know: we scream at each other from morning to night but my love for you swells its banks while you sleep. I murmur it to your sleeping body. Which is no good to you, but still. Here I sit. Have you any idea of your beauty? Photos never quite capture it.

We set out in life believing we will forge so many enduring bonds when really we are blessed with so few, no more than three or four if we are lucky, and one of mine was with a cat.

There is nothing a mother would not do to protect her child from harm. She would kill others for him, she would kill her husband, she would kill herself.

Fire means danger. Fire means run. Fire means an agonising death.

Here’s my ennobling truth, Sailor: women risk death to give life to their babies. They endure excruciating pain, their inner parts torn, then they pick themselves up no matter what state they are in, no matter how much blood they’ve lost, and they tend to their infants. Your fires on Orion and your Luke, I am your father. Tell me, men: When were you last split open from the inside?

Everything I thought I knew was wrong. As a child, my mother’s word had been final, her certainty absolute. Here I was, older now than she was then yet riddled with conflicts, an unstable compound.

I am tired. I am lonely. I have found myself mired in resentment in this new life, become a person I don’t wish to be, feeling constant guilt for not feeling constant gratitude for the blessing that is my child. I do feel constant gratitude: I adore my child. But I am tired. I am lonely. I am lost.

Your baby has a fever, my husband stated. Medicate your baby. How hard can it be?

I felt good, little Sailor. I felt like myself. I started singing to you, not because I can sing, but despite the fact that I can’t.

Hadn’t thought about death until I had you. A door opened when you entered my life and that door goes two ways. A baby was placed in the crook of my arm, and a skull on my open palm as I was crowned a mother. Here is your baby. One day you will lose him. He will lose you. You will all lose each other, and he never called her Mama again.