Nestlings

by Nat Cassidy

A garden of resentment was sown that day. Its hideous plants bloomed at irregular, unpredictable intervals. A sprig of hate. A blossom of blame. Entire teeming hedgerows of depression and alienation.

Music played from invisible speakers, ambient jazz. Harmless, innocuous shit. Now it sounded loud and lunatic. Insects on fire.

Reid’s fist connected with Frank’s jowled chin. He felt Frank’s teeth scrape against his knuckles, and somewhere, angels sang.

“I’m drawn to dark stories,” he’d said. “Especially lately. You’re meeting me during a very strange time in my life, Reid. I suppose that’s true for everyone these days.”

“When we speak of creatures like the vampire,” Isaac continued, “we speak of metaphors. We give them little Achilles’ heels so we can feel better, but tell me: What vulnerabilities does grief have? How would a hero defeat that monster? He can’t, can he?” His welling eyes latched on Charlie again. “I could’ve saved my boy, you know. A simple vaccination might have done it. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just our lot to suffer. That’s what our people are ‘chosen’ to do. Our birthright. Our curse.”

Will I be one of those women who get to say it was over before I knew it? Will I be in labor for entire days and think it’ll never end? Or will I join the tragic sisterhood of women killed in childbirth?

Suddenly, outside, a cloud shifted, and a sharp blast of sunlight shot through the window. Barely over the horizon, the sun blazed with magic-hour intensity, throwing a spotlight onto the creature on the steps. It didn’t shriek or sizzle or smoke. It blinked at the intense brightness and threw an arm across its face in a bizarrely human gesture. From her close vantage, Ana could see how the crenulated flesh on the creature’s arm began to turn grayer in the sunlight. The skin, drying. Ever so subtly turning to stone.

She remembered hearing someone in a support group once complaining about a monument for a dead kid they’d seen on the internet. The kid had used a wheelchair his whole life, and when he died, some well-meaning fuckwits had built a statue depicting the kid finally flying away from his chair, as if that signified a sort of blissful freedom.

Motherhood was joy, was pain, was standing over the crib with a knife, was standing over the crib with a lullaby. Motherhood was breakage, was expansion, was depletion, was fulfillment, was creation, and an endless series of goodbyes. Motherhood was contradiction. That was its beauty. That was its horror. And if it drove you mad trying to square its inconsistencies, well, tough luck, because motherhood cared nothing about what happened inside of you. Motherhood had already taken what it needed from inside of you and had given it to the world. Anything else was up to you and fate. Bashert.

Grief is the space between two states of being: who you were and who you are.