Red Room Where the Writers Are

Again, dark morning trudging. Scratching my belly; a stretch of limbs. Weeds feather my shins, thwack my calf in passing. A plunging of my hand into tepid water to crank the valve. How nice it would be, shocking even, to thrust my hand into that muddied square of water and be cold, but alas, this is Texas and tepid is the word of the day, or torpid. Just plain warm even, like the glowing bake waves roiling from a new muffin, only not as nice. I know: excessive. Shouldn't I say I got up or rose and turned the water valve? Let's move on the with events already. But I like it. Sometimes asceticism is so droll. Muffins demand high language. They do.

I yearn for the quiet morning kitchen. My slow preparations: cracked eggs, bubbling butter, the hot handle of the cast iron wrapped in black mitten. Socks dropped on the kitchen table next to the baby tray that is crusty still with last night's feeding. Dirty floor crumbs under my feet. Needs a sweep. Scratching in my notebook these various details; the rubber band holding the pen against the spine snaps.

A stirring in the other room. My son. Here he comes. Noise boils into the kitchen, stumbles along with him. A Star Wars catalog shoved in front of my face:

"These toys." He points. "They come with droid parts. I need these."

"We'll see."

"This guy here died in the Death Star." Still pointing.

I look at the catalog. The Clone Wars. New movie. "The Clone Wars take place before the Death Star was destroyed." I explain.

Thoughts work through his face, finally come out as "Before Episode 4 then?"

"Yes."

"Lando destroyed the second Death Star, Dad. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

Oh my gosh, I'm raising a geek.

I sit and eat my eggs. Next to the baby's empty chair. I imagine that absence and extend it out to the pale green halls of hospitals, to the weary eyes of doctors, extend that emptiness out to the edge of my life and discover that edge is far away now, the ambitus of my prior existence evinced by her arrival, extended by it. Here is where loss would bloom. If I were to lose my daughter, that absence would swell, envelop, subsume, consume. If it's possible, such a thing would horribly blossom. Makes me want to weep, so I turn to my email.