Vanished
By Nise
I had picked a name. It was going to be Selena Carlene Manoso.
Naming her made it real for me. After I had a name, I had a face. I had a smile, I had a baby.
'I had a baby.'
I never wanted one, I never wanted her, but then I had her.
'I had a baby.'
I wanted her to look like her father. At least then she would know a piece of him. I would tell her all about him, my Batman who saved me from everything and one day would save her too, if I ever told him.
I wanted to say so many things to her. I was going to be everything my mother wasnt and everything I wish she had been. I was going to show her everything I always wanted to see and anything she wanted to see. I just had to wait to see what it was. I just had to wait to see her eyes and hear her cries and everything would really be real, like her name and her face and her being.
I heard her cries at night sometimes and Id wander to her room, the room I made for her, pink it was. But she was never there, not yet anyway. Soon.
I just wanted time to speed up, like my heart did at the thoughts of her, Selena. Maybe that's why I was speeding.
'I had a baby.'
"Babe?"
I was in a hospital I knew. He hadn't slept in days as far as I could tell. Not since the last time I woke up and saw him. His eyes, at the time, all I saw were her eyes.
"I had a baby." I whispered.
Selena Carlene Manoso would have been my baby.