Love

I like to sit in the sun, outside our house, near to the church, although I fear the saint's hallmark: Sebastian's poisoned arrows. I have my reasons. Just as the fabric of dusk drops, the starlings’ murmuration—as flexible and soft-edged as a scanned womb—disperses.The phone rings. My son quietly tells me he doesn't want to live anymore.He was conceived within shouting distance of the sea. The swoosh of the backwash is fixed in my head, sometimes it's so strong you can fall. I would frog-kick down to the seabed, skim the seaweed grass, pulse in my ears. Will he let his body glide upwards to break the surface, gasp and howl-in air to reclaim breathing?The day I sat on the strand, the water lulling by arms, I felt his presence for the first time, but when I focus, the sweet lapping of waves is gone, the memory unmade. I willed our family to listen, like a diver craving communication, the vibrations of love he needed, lost to the sea's abyss. I know there are barnacles that infest crabs, brainwashing them to love their invading roots like eggs, as they flush and nurture with oxygen-rich water.The olive tree on the shore embodies that past life. My limbs could be branches, made to twist and form hidey-holes. The trunk is lined with honeycomb but there are no hexagons. The bees are the gatekeepers. I cannot hear them. They are silenced by pain.Now my boy's passion is based on water. A boat, body strength and oars. No sail but poise and bold pose, split-second equilibrium before driving the blade into water, pulling for the perfect stroke, the time when he is free and teeming with life.Yet he is on a knife edge, yearning to draw life close to death, only halted by the thought of what his death would do to me. He is charmed by our fear for each other's existence.At first, amniotic fluid consists of water from the mother's body, but gradually it changes, the larger portion made up of the baby's urine.