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If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this short story (or novella) from the beginning (link here).

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On my train ride back from work,
Inside an eggshell-white passenger car,
Slumped with weariness in a plasticky seat
As if my muscles and bones sought to dissolve,
Lethargy pulled down my eyelids
While I fought to remain awake.
At my stop, I exited dragging mutinous feet,
Then trudged my way to a purported refuge.

In the past, after the workday had drained me
And I returned to my parents’ apartment,
I ensconced myself in my childhood bedroom.
Many such afternoons, I dropped onto bed,
Where, as white noise coursed through my limbs,
I slipped into daydreams or hallucinations.
Now, when I opened my apartment’s door
To the smell of home-cooked food
Mingled with those of baby powder and cigarettes,
I faced my lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mom,
Who looked pale and jittery, stimulated by a cocktail
Of caffeine, nicotine, and food-derived boosters.
She unloaded her day’s frustrations onto me,
Her patient listener and supportive husband,
Who could barely string coherent sentences.

I yearned to collapse onto the couch
And indulge in the oblivion of mindless shows,
But my wife had waited for the chance to escape
And puff on her damnable sticks in the balcony,
So I, as if prodded by a cattle farmer’s pole,
Was thrust into a chain of duties.

I tended to our baby, who spent his waking life
Cooing, babbling, crying, and pooping.
I changed his diapers, bottle-fed him formula,
Wiped the trickle of milk dripping from his chin,
Played with him until his squeals fizzled out,
And struggled to soothe his colicky self.

I went out on evening errands
Such as buying snacks or cigarettes,
Fetching prescriptions from the pharmacy,
Or perusing supermarket aisles for deals.
I held plastic-wrapped packages of meats
While the fluorescent tubes overhead
Bounced reflections off the polished tiles.

As if the apartment wanted to fall apart,
I had to replace burned-out bulbs,
Repair leaky faucets,
Unclog slow-draining pipes;
Tasks that I, who had grown up drawing,
Should have known by instinct how to do.

I didn’t complain against an adult’s fate,
That of ants, termites, or bees,
Perpetually teeming.
Besides, I received the orders from my wife,
Who had sought me out and witnessed me.
I had become a vessel for her hope,
And I didn’t dare discard it.

In the amber glow of the nursery lamp,
I rocked our baby in my arms
And crooned “Brahms’ Lullaby”
As I paced under the gaze of a plush giraffe.
Sleep is a realm, or a void,
Into which one eagerly dives and drowns.
Why would a baby fight the descent?
What better way to spend one’s time,
What lovelier gift could anyone hope for
Than a momentary reprieve from consciousness?

After my baby’s eyelids drifted shut
And his drowsy coos trailed off,
With him cradled in his crib,
I snuck into the master bedroom
And slid under the covers
Beside my wife’s warmth.
As I lay like a bruised, spent sailor
Whose ship had battled tempests,
Finally left alone, I sank
Into the ocean of the subconscious,
From whose murk you emerged,
Gliding through the viscous tides,
Your caramel locks billowing,
Arms extended toward me.
Tangled and embraced, we swam
Out of reach from the surface.

Through a gap in the bathroom door, I glimpsed
My topless, teary-eyed wife’s reflection.
She was grimacing bitterly at her midriff:
Over the waistband of her panties, which pressed
Into the softened roundness of her lower belly,
The overhead light accentuated, deepened,
A cluster of stretch marks surrounding the navel
In patterns of silvery and flesh-toned scratches.
With a fingertip, she traced the striae
That reminded her of the burden taken on,
And the toll it had exacted.

He lay cocooned in a blue woolen onesie,
His chubby fists curled near his cheeks,
His pacifier abandoned in a corner
Like a bone of a half-consumed victim.
From his barrel-shaped chest,
The ribs rose and fell rhythmically
As his small lungs expanded and contracted,
Preparing to spew volcanic ash.
Overlooking this dormant bundle of rage,
This little tyrant from a hostile planet,
I, his caretaker, or slave, stood motionless,
Dreading that the alien would awaken
And, while thrashing his tiny limbs,
Erupt in an incandescent wail
That would pierce my eardrums
And ripple through my bones,
Shattering my sanity.

The shower’s scorching jets
Steamed as they scoured my skin,
Streaming down my hunched spine.
I clawed at my skull;
Another goddamn Monday morning
Of a suffocating cycle
That would last lifetimes.
What was I holding out for?
That your ghost would burst in
And whisk me away from this cage
To resume where we had left off
A decade ago?

Cloistered within steam,
Under the drumming of water,
I whispered “Izar, Izar, Izar,”
A plea for help, an invocation.
The hooks were carving deeper,
And trickles of blood
Were dragged down the drain.

In a weekday evening, crumpled on the couch,
I had drifted off only to jolt awake.
A cartoon flickered on the TV screen,
Mingling its colors with the apartment’s lights.
At the edge of my blurred vision,
My son’s toddling form loomed
As he, clad in dinosaur pajamas,
Dragging a stuffed plush puppy,
Explored the living room
In a quest for the limits of the known,
Or anything to gum and drool on.
His clumsy fingers seized the remote,
That he shook experimentally.
The TV blackened.

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Author’s note: today’s song is “La puerta de al lado” by Los Rodríguez.

If you enjoy my free verse poetry, I have three books worth of it yet to be self-published. Check it out.