Stay.

I imagine bending over backward, my body like a wet olive leaf, until just my feet and ankles and calves are upright. Until my hands touch the hot earth, and my eyes see the world turned around, upside down. I imagine his words flying right above me, across the space my torso just was. So they miss me -- no contact. "Stay." No contact.

Instead I'm silent. What do you say to that?
Yes, I'll stay. Of course, you're in charge here, you say you want me here, I'll be here. Instead I'm silent.

Silent as I walk to our door, a hole in our earthen wall, and silent as I choose the pomegranates and onions in the cacophony of the bazaar. Silent as I keep walking from the bazaar and as I reach my lady's house. Silent as she lets me in and makes the phone calls.

Silent as I board the bus, as I see that little brown head, not yet two weeks. Not yet mine.

Silent as I shiver, silent as I wipe my face, silent as my vision blurs then clears, then blurs again.

Years ago, I was lithe and fresh and full of myself. Now I am old and alone. My apartment is empty, my fridge, my womb. Empty. Empty. Empty.

I can almost feel that heat again, the heat of midday. Dust blowing everywhere. The heat that clung to my hands, between my fingers, my lower back, the nape of my neck. I can almost feel it underneath all this cold I feel now, which doesn't cling to any part of me.

The first time I felt that cold, that night in some benign stranger's house. Sleeping without a man, but with a child, for the first time in my young life, and so cold, hugging this innocent life to my chest.

It was so different from the heat I knew when I was young. Married. A wife, given somebody else's child.

"Stay." He said, "I want you to be here. To be his mother."

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