This One Isn't As Good...

In My Opinion. But Maybe It Is. I Don't Know. Read and Compare.

It was a squirming, writhing pink bit of life. It stood out from the cotton blanket underneath it only because it was moving so intensely. He looked down on it, lying in its crib. It grabbed and kicked at the air, wanting nothing more than to free itself from the plastic prison. It wasn’t the bars that kept it in – but the mere reality that it couldn’t get up off its back. It didn’t have the strength to free itself. So it wriggled and screamed and cried itself into exhaustion. After several minutes of hesitation, he reached into the crib and pulled the child out. At first he held it with his hands, but upon catching its bright, wide eyes he carefully placed it against his blue jean shirt. The warmth the child produced alarmed him and almost caused him to drop it back in its crib. But he had been through this with the others and quickly calmed himself. Its head bobbled about, trying to find a place against its father’s shoulder. He waited, frozen stiff in place until the child rested its head and moved its tiny thumb into its little wet mouth. He sighed a large breath and closed his eyes, hoping that indescribable bond would instantly forge between him and the child. He was hoping that the child’s warmth would be more than body heat, that this feeling his wife had described would fill him. So he held it closer to him and wrapped his arms tighter around it. He could feel the fuzzy texture of its footed pajamas, feel it’s miniature legs as they slipped together and apart again, he could feel the fluffy hair on the round head and the soft skin on the back of its neck. But he could not feel that feeling.

His heart sank deep into his chest. He tried to ignore it and concentrate on getting the baby to sleep. So he rubbed its back and swayed slowly to and fro, but he couldn’t ignore the way his heart hurt. He had never believed in the heart in an emotional way before. It was an organ before – but now, after all these years, it was pain. It had a certain emotional excrement. He couldn’t quite figure out what the two had to do with each other, but somehow that place in his chest where his heart beat was inextricably tied to this feeling. It was safe to say he had never felt love. Love was something he saw, something he said, someway he acted. Love meant something, but he never felt love in his chest the way he felt this pain. One could not call him cold for this. He wanted desperately to feel love, especially for his children. But he never could. Love would have kept him there. Love would have outweighed the responsibilities and the struggles and the late nights and the chores and the dirty diapers and the constant nagging. But between him and his children there was nothing. He had always known he didn’t love the children’s mothers. He had been through that struggle long ago and discovered it was impossible to love a real woman. He only loved their original incarnations, when he first met them and they still pretended with all their makeup and high heels– when they never farted or complained and flirted with their eyes, when there was late night conversations and trips to the beach. Then came the nagging and the constant requests for jewelry. The stories would repeat themselves and the bitching about work would start. And then the red hot intense regret for having said “I love you,” would appear. Because then he realized that he didn’t love them at all. And then one of them got pregnant. After years of the women, he was excited for years of children. If ever a man could love another – it would be his own child.

The child came. A daughter. And yet he did not love her. He tried to talk about this with the girl’s mother and she told him that he would learn to love the child. That he better learn to love the child. But months passed and he never learned. The little girl was nothing but a blinking crying eating pooping breathing cooing rolling smiling screaming needing thing. It was to him an itch. It had only to be scratched and he felt nothing more than that. He resigned himself to live this way, loving neither his girlfriend nor his child. But then he watched her with the baby. He watched her love it and hold it and pet it sweetly and he realized that he would never feel that – only that he needed to. More months passed and the need to feel that love consumed him. He wanted to love the child, feel connected to his child. And yet he never did. So one night he left. And that was all.

The experience changed him though. His life was now in total pursuit of love. When he found a woman he believed he loved, he quickly proposed and they wed and started a family. This, his first real wife, kept him constantly connected to the baby. He went to all her doctor appointments, read all the literature, attended la maze classes, and stayed in the delivery room when the child was born. He was even there when the nurse handed his wife the child. She held it, wrapped in its little pink blanket and smiled up at him. He placed his arms around her and smiled back, waiting for her to pull the blanket away from its face, so he could look into its brand new eyes. When she did, he looked down on it and saw – to his complete horror – that it was wearing the same face as his first daughter. And he knew instantly that he did not love her and never would. His wife never understood why he filed for divorce, but she quickly realized that she had no choice in the matter, because one night he left. And that was all.

The room was reflecting deep blue now. The sun was completely gone from the world outside the windows and the night had crept in and filled the house. It was distantly quiet, except for the rhythmic breathing of his first son against his chest. He had been holding the child for nearly an hour now, and still, the child was just a being that clung to him. Perhaps this is all there is, he thought. Perhaps love is all an illusion and he is the only one who knows it. Perhaps love is left to the young and he was too old now. Perhaps love was something that had to be earned. Perhaps his heart can only feel pain and he can’t feel love in the same way. Perhaps love is only something you can see, something you can say, someway you can act. Perhaps love is not at all something that can be. Perhaps this is love.

He lay the tiny boy back in its bed. He stood over it, watching it again. It wasn’t moving anymore. Now it was just a still, quiet thing, blending inherently into all the other still, quiet things in the room. Without the warmth of this child against his chest, he didn’t feel anything at all toward it. And the warmth was quickly cooling. He walked towards the door, his large white sneakers swishing against the carpet. He pushed the shiny gold handle down and the door was released from its shell in the wall. He passed through the hole and out into the empty hall. He peered into his own bedroom and saw his wife sleeping inside the wide white bed. He then instantly glanced down the hall to the front door. The streetlights from outside painted the floor like the white lines outlining a road. He began slowly churning towards them, the warm lights, like a mosquito into a zapper. When he reached the door he looked outside at a world of possibilities. He grabbed for the door handle and gripped it tight so that his knuckles turned white. He squeezed it so desperately he could feel tiny beads of sweat forming in the palm of his hands. Pain began flowing through each finger in his clenched claw. He turned the knob and ripped the door open. Only it didn’t open. His hand flew off the knob, but the door remained in the wall, bolted by the lock. He turned away from the windows and threw his back against the door. He caught his breath and looked at his world. A dark hallway. And that was all.

He moved away from the door and back to the bedroom he shared with his wife. He used his feet to remove his shoes, one at a time. He didn’t even bother to take his clothes off. He just pulled the blanket off the bed and slipped inside its warm pocket. He shuffled over to the side his wife was sleeping on and wrapped his arms around her, wishing only for the connection body heat provides. She breathed in and quietly moaned. “I love you,” she whispered into the blueness. The pain returned to his heart. To her, this was love. But he could not bring himself to respond in like. So he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.


Her eyes flew open. She held her breath and waited for his response. It did not come. She breathed in the air, the void, the space where she should have heard “I love you too,” and it made her sick. And so she lay awake for many hours wondering, “Is that all?”