My baby cries but I don’t answer when she calls.

Too lost in my thoughts to adhere to her wails, her needs. Her hunger feeds my sorrow as I contemplate every new day. I am not enough. These arms weren’t meant to cradle, to hold, they’ve barely molded the life I’ve wanted to live. How did I end up here? She continues to cry, pleading for me. Her hollering like knives as they dig into the skin on my back, reminding me of every night I spent on my back. I swim through those memories trying to pinpoint what I would’ve done differently.

My baby cries, but I don’t answer when she calls.

Darkness falls in between the spaces of her pudgy fingers as she flails. Wildly, she hurtles her wails for mommy into the air. I want to tend to those screams, but sit seems my thoughts consume most of my time. I cry to the night as if it might know that I don’t have the slightest idea of how to are for my child. Mother moon maybe you could take her because my arms aren’t strong enough to cradle, breasts aren’t experienced enough to nurse. My voice doesn’t know lullabys, or how to laugh with children. I feel a tinge of impatience, wearing thin. The hollering, so sharp in pitch, that its like a dagger dragged across my skin. This invisible umbilical thrown around the neck, so close, I feel I may choke. Is no one else listening? Too busy shouting that if I didn’t want a kid I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant then. Too busy with their slicing judgments, cutting into my womb. This baby deserves more than the broken spirit and resentment. The guilt and torment. The melancholy. What if she ends up just like her mother? Hunger feeds the need for urgency as I am stuck contemplating tomorrow. Her future, for which I am responsible.

Would she grow up happy? The worries, the apologies, the missed time, the ‘daddy’s not here because’s. I confide all these thoughts to you when my baby cries–
I thought I told you to stop crying–
is all I can manage to answer.