Hush Baby Hush

She rocks me to sleep in her arms every night. She holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. You’re safe, she says. You’re safe as you’ll ever be.

I look into her eyes and can’t speak words. I cry like a newborn because it’s what I am when she holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. And I don’t feel safe, at night, with this creature, human in form I think. She’s all I’ve ever known.

I used to fight back and claw at her eyes, but her grip is strong. So strong that I’ve grown to full form and still can’t get out of her arms. Let me go, I say. I’m a woman, let me go.

But she holds me and sways and coos hush baby hush. So I’ve taken to closing my eyes and dreaming of my dimension twin. The me from another world. I imagine her eating daisies and swinging from willows and playing the harmonica with a blade of grass. She is free, exposed, filthy as swine. She lives as she pleases, she fucks as she pleases.

She doesn’t like when I dream. She puts her mouth over my head and takes my thoughts, takes my breath. She slips inside of my body and moves my arms, punches my fists. She stumbles and falls and crawls, all while screaming I hate you to the walls of the hallow room.

And once her pain has become my own, she ejects herself from my body, lifeless now, and swaddles me in cotton, takes me in her arms, and sways and coos hush baby hush. She never looks at me as she rocks, squeezing tighter until I nearly suffocate from the pressure. But she never grants me the mercy of death. She needs me to stay hidden.

When she is done with me, she puts me back in my cage for the next time the world crumbles. Its crumbling is chronic. And when she walks toward the door and I try my words and say meekly, mother, please let me go, she turns and coos hush baby hush.