AALIYAH

 

ALL THE BEAUTIFUL things that I’ve been a burden for came to me in a storm.

Elijah came to us two weeks early. His tiny bones and tiny hands and tiny worth in this tiny, tiny world bore a kind of magic, that somehow turned into something massive in that same breath.

The Uber driver drove us through the rain in his PT Cruiser with the bald tires that was one of three things filled with reckless abandon on the road that night. God, we were so fucking young. Young in that way that believed there was a kind of terminality to our mistakes, if only we could escape our twenties alive, if only with a few broken teeth, if only with bruised bone. The downpour was thick, clat-clatting on the car so heavily that the voice recognition app on the driver’s phone kept chirping to life with I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.

I didn’t understand it either, none of the shit that brought me there with him that night, a week or so after he’d made his choice, and I’d told him to get the hell out of our lives. Colin was like that, maybe it was some macho shit, chasing things that didn’t want to be found all the harder. Maybe it was hope, that thing Momma said shows its head in the dark, that four-letter word we must carry but can never say aloud or give form or do anything but swallow into our bellies to flutter and lay in wait. Or maybe it was just that part of him that I always wondered was there until I couldn’t do anything but see it in rusted smiles.

We made it to the hospital. We rushed through the storm, me swatting away Colin’s hand as he tried to carry us into the hospital, as he tried to force me into a wheelchair, as he tried to take control of the situation he would later abandon, of my Elijah.

He cried, and for a moment I thought he was terrified, angry that we were so selfish to bring him into a world that would take him from us one day.

I cried too. Not so poetically, more from pushing eight pounds of just us from my vag.

Colin leaned into my ear and whispered that no matter what, no matter the cost, he would always be there with us.

There isn’t much beyond that. You were born, no twists or turns, just the story of the only thing that will ever matter to me in this eroding, cursed earth that I need to force somewhere here.

You were named Elijah, because mom loved her Bible. Because even as a heathen academic, I do too. Because we give you what armour we can. I always wanted you to go your own way, though, because what’s the point of a god without faith? What’s the point of a church you are dragged to kicking and screaming?

Regardless where you find your belief in this life, Elijah was a pretty badass dude, so you’re welcome. He was a prophet, a real one, who opposed a king, who knew what it was like to lose and to give up, who wasn’t allowed to. That… may set a pretty high bar for you, so, sorry about that.

He was blessed, and he was made a miracle worker. He went to the dead son of a widow, he brought him back to a life he’d left too soon. He did all those things we wish we could do.

I mostly just want to say here, Eli, that if this ever gets to you, I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you these things myself.