Grace

I had a baby, yea. Forget about my addiction. Forget about my recovery. I had a baby when I wasn’t but thirteen years old. I had her out behind the shed when my daddy told me he didn’t want to get any blood on the carpet. He was right to be careful. When the baby came, I spilled more blood than even God could imagine when he came up with the human heart. But I was young and strong, my daddy always said I was a tomboy with a capital “T”, and I felt like I could spill an ocean’s worth and not feel the effect of my life draining away. If I died and came back to life I didn’t notice it enough to tell it.

She was the tiniest thing. You could fit her in the cup of your hands and she’d still feel like it was the whole world’s cradle. My daddy finally came out to see when I stopped crying. He took her off in a towel. He held her like someone holds the morning paper. That was the last I ever saw of her. You tell me that baby won’t live on forever for me. You look me in the eye and tell me she isn’t out there somewhere living the life she was meant to live. I am allowed to imagine things. I have the right to imagine things.

Who’s to say she will ever die if her own mommy is never there to witness it? I could more rightly prove that we’re going to live forever. I got twenty five years of living days to back me up and not one day of death that says otherwise. You might say you got twenty five years of dead days and you’re still waiting to be born. Well, that means you are willing to die in order to survive. And hell, that makes you more survivor than me.

Remember that night on stage and you played and they booed and spit and threw things at you like you were some animal to be shooed away? You left with grace. That’s all anyone can ask of themselves. My baby left me the same way. I never heard her cry. Grace. It was her one and only gift to me.