“As We Made Him,” by Elizabeth Metzger - The New Yorker

It’s his fourth birthday again in the land of forgetting.
Humongous balloons sway and pop in the wind.
The trick candles pop and sway as I pass them in front of his breath.
I have such a sweet tooth for family I deny he is missing.
Regression means he is closer to where we made him.

Thin mist from his first night home from the hospital still haunts us.
Sometimes I sleep in the position I was in when we made him.
French-blue curtains in the guesthouse lit our skin blue.
Sometimes I hang off the bed for an hour after,
longing to return to his birth or before we made him.

It’s his fourth birthday and the candles trick us again.
A few balloons re-inflate from their shiny torn skins. Impossible.
The mist hides nothing, leaves us. Ordinary sky closes in.
I am so afraid I’ll leave then haunt my family, I kiss and kiss them.
If he were to forget us, would we still be the ones who made him?

This is drawn from “The Going Is Forever.”

查看原文：“As We Made Him,” by Elizabeth Metzger - The New Yorker