Sin Fronteras Spring 2017 Sin Fronteras Spring 2017 | Page 28

Joy of Motherhood
José Luis Zorrero

She rests on her glossy and crumpled bed sheets. Napping. Her head,
slightly turned to the side, and her serene, expressionless face reveals that
she is safe, away from her troubles. She dreams about her baby’s teddy
bears, colored plastic toy cars and battery-powered toy trains. She dreams
about paintings on her fridge. Dreams about the first time her baby walked
and dreams about how many diapers she has to buy for the next month.
Her breathing pattern is slow, calm and tranquil; suddenly, she hears it.
The dreaded cry.

Her eyes pop open as quickly and suddenly as a traffic light turns from
red to green. She lies in bed, frozen and hoping that her over-protective
instincts crafted the dreaded sob she heard. Closing her eyes and filling
herself with concentration, she knows the baby wants food. She throws
the bed sheets off, gets up and stumbles as she walks through the room.
Filled with drowsiness, she fails to avoid the lego bricks scattered across
the floor. She’s more awake, as she gathers herself and her thoughts on
the wooden banister in the hall, panting, sweating and still listening to the
dreaded cry that seems to be implanted in her brain. She walks down the
stairs and into the kitchen, puts on yellow rubber gloves, takes the plastic
baby bottles from the cabinet and starts to clean them with scalding hot
water. She uses a sponge with soap that produces bubbles that fly up to the
ceiling. She continues to obsessively clean the bottles; the heat penetrates
through her gloves and burns her flesh.

She throws a milky powder into the bottles, along with warm water,
that mix together into a glossy, white, milky substance. She walks up the
stairs, with the milk placed meticulously in the baby bag along with tiny
diapers and clothes. She sees the door of the baby’s bedroom, approaches
and touches the cold metallic handle and time stops as she is transported to
the cold, metallic birth table at the hospital. The life she is to have, has been
sucked out of her. Her appearance is frigid and corpse-like, vulnerable and
exposed on the table. Her blood-stained hospital gown is the affirmation
of what the doctor entering the room and carrying the folder will tell her.
She won’t be a mother.
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About Drowning
Isaac Markman
I am like a swimming pool.
I used to only be blue, cheerfully sad
Now I am also pink, purple and green
Attractive and somewhat kind.
I smell like chlorine because
I bleach out
As many imperfections
As possible.
I am like a pool because
I am deeper than I look
But shallow in all the right places—
Shallower than I feel.
I am a pool because
I am tiled,
I am evolving,
I am messy
I am nice,
But I also drown people
Accidentally, but
Sometimes
On purpose.
In the heated Summer
They´ve always loved me; but
In the cold Winter
They would skate on my frozen
surface.
And their blades cut me.
So I built a ceiling,
Bought a heater,
And kept covered.
I am tough yet vulnerable.
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