If Not for My Baby

by Kate Golden

I need a cabinet of old receipts to sort or a bunch of blunt eyeliner to sharpen. Something tactile to calm me down and help me think.

That whole Irish Jim-Morrison-meets-Jesus-if-he-lived-in-the-forest thing isn’t really for me.

mostly, he sings of heartbreak. Yearning. Begging on his knees. Someone clearly trampled this man’s heart into the ground. And then threw it into a wood chipper. Repeatedly. And judging by all the references to earth and soil, trees and wood, sunlight and bogs…she broke his heart in a forest? I haven’t quite figured it out.

I haven’t seen Skechers since kindergarten and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them.

With that I let my head fall backward into the vending machine in misery. Maybe it will swallow me whole and I’ll be reborn as a light blue Gatorade.

Halloran laughs again and I’m hit with the strangest urge to store all his laughs somewhere safe. Cram them into a little treasure box and bury them in my backyard.

Mom Clark: Clementine Betty Boop Clark. What on earth is going on with you and that beautiful Irishman? Call me.

I like being the sturdy, reliable one. It makes me feel safe.

Suddenly, I’m all too aware of my dumb denim miniskirt and bare thighs. I feel like a Bratz doll.

“Is it very foreign to let someone look after you?”

I’m already fighting the overwhelming urge to inhale into his chest, and I’m only a human woman. I cannot fight so many mental battles and emerge victorious.

the baby doll dress probably looks mouthwatering on her since she’s 90 percent leg, but I just look like an actual baby’s doll—perhaps Kit from American Girl.

“Because I think of you nonstop. You’re legging it through my mind daily, Clem.

“You’re not interested in me.” “I’m not?” A slight smile twists at the corner of his mouth. “You should tell my dreams that.”

But I can’t forget any part of him. He’s already indelible ink scribbled across the fabric of me.

I know that I need him. Physically, religiously, unspeakably. A neutering couldn’t help me at this point—I need Tom Halloran.

“Baby.” His eyes darken. “I’ll take care of you, I swear it.”

I’m a horny creature from some black lagoon. One that’s ovulating, maybe.

“She’s just…she needs me, you know?” “I don’t blame her,” he says, brushing his knuckles over my cheek. “You’re very easy to need.”

He could ask me to meet him in an industrial incinerator. I’d show up in my lucky black jeans.

Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl in a flower crown

But at some point in life we become whoever we needed most as a child. Whoever your mam couldn’t quite be for you. That’s human. And you needn’t beat yourself up for it.”

To be loved is to be known—the worst of you, the best of you.

When I meet his stare, it’s that of a man whose yearning has finally been quenched. Suffering ended. He looks at me like I’ve fixed whatever was broken in him for some time.