that is why you should never fall in love.

    My father loves a hundred girls, my father loves a million girls.  He loves them in the span of an afternoon and he loves them over the course of a week and he loves them in the arch of their back and the curve of their neck and the lashes of their eyes.  What he loves about each of them is different and it is real.  And I think, in a way, it was necessary.  I think he peeled away the skin from each of them, left them raw and open on his bed and walked around them with a magnifying glass, peering inside of their organs and opening up their internal cavities until he found what he was looking for.  I think he took one thing from each of these women and like a treasure map, they all led him to my mother.  My mother ankle deep in blue water, my mother juggling oranges in a supermarket, my mother eating sandwiches on the roof of a mattress factory.  Every step we take in life leads us somewhere specific but we can only see what the pieces make when the last one has been clicked into place.  It is like a puzzle in that way.  You get chunks at a time, you get the border and then you fill in around the edges, you group things by color and by pattern and you fit the teeth together so there is no seam.  And at the end, when the last bit of grey or blue has been pressed into place, you can see the big picture.  And you can see all the lines and all the pieces that make the big picture and you can see how none of it would work without each and every one of them.  And that is what I tell Peter whenever he gets hurt, even though I don’t think he understands me yet.  But I tell him, Peter.  Someday you’ll see where this scraped knee fits into everything.  Someday you’ll be happy for this scraped knee.  Someday you will meet a girl or a boy and she or he will love your once-scraped knee and your other knee and your face and your hands and the dip in your clavicle and you will fall in love.  Someday it will all make sense to you.
    “Love, our dog is getting admirers,” Tomek whispers into my ear.  He has turned to look behind him; I do the same and I see an older couple cooing and sighing over him.  He looks up at them and pants his tongue and cocks his head.  Sometimes I feel like I don’t know this being at all.  My child might as well be a stranger.  They come out with things and you think, but I didn’t teach them that!  Tomek didn’t teach them that!  Maybe they are not mine at all.
    “Come, Matthew,” I say, patting my thighs.  The woman looks up at me and I smile warmly at her.  She carries a bouquet of flowers.  People bring flowers to the water and set them free over the waves.
    The man is coming up to us.  He takes Tomek by the elbow.  “Nice lookin’ pup you got there.”
    “Why thank you, sir,” Tomek says, bowing his head.  People are charmed by him because of his accent.  I was even charmed because of it.  When I first met him, I couldn’t tell what I was sleeping with.  The man or the voice, the reality or the idea.  Now I’m happy taking turns with each.
    “How old?” the woman says, coming up behind her husband.  She puts her arm around his arm.  For support.
    “He’s four,” I say.  “He’s pretending to be a dog.”
    “And a fine pup!  Nice lookin’ pup!” the man says loudly.  Peter scampers up to us and hides in the folds of my skirt.  We laugh at him.
    “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Tomek says seriously, inclining his chin at the woman’s flowers.
    “Oh, well,” she says sadly.  “All of my children, can you believe it?  Grandchildren too.  Not one left.”
    Sometimes I think my heart is like a stone.  Like when my mother grew me in her stomach she did not want to give me a bit of her heart to grow my own heart, and so she went out into the backyard and found a stone of comparable size.  Perhaps she cut it up and ate it or perhaps she mashed it up like a potato or perhaps she swallowed it whole.  No matter which way it got inside me it is there now and when I can feel it beating it is the dull thumping beat of a stone and when I feel it in between beats it is heavy and cumbersome like a stone.  And like a stone it cannot break and like a stone it does not grow or swell.
    “I’m so sorry,” I say.
    “It’s no matter now,” the man says.  “It’s all behind us now, isn’t it?”
    “My parents,” I say obediently.
    Tomek didn’t lose anyone.  I can’t understand how he came out so unscathed, so intact.  He puts his arm around my waist.  The couple and I, something passes between us.  A suffering.  A shared pain, the pain of the left behind. 
    “Take this, then, little Matthew,” she says.  Peter looks up at the mention of his puppy-name.  She pulls a single flower from her bouquet.  I’ve never been good with flowers; I don’t know what kind it is.
    “What do you say?” I ask him.
    “Woof,” he says.
    “Human voice, please,” I say.
    “Thank you,” he says.  I’m shocked he listened.  He stands up then and he takes the flower from the woman.  Even children, they can feel when you are meant to behave.  They can sense the need for quiet, for sobriety. 
    “You’re meant to go put it in the ocean, son,” the man says.  “Can you do that?”
    “Don’t touch the water, Peter!” I yell as he leaps away from us, running towards the water.
    “Have you had the dream too, then?” the woman says.  For just a moment she is inside my head.  I can feel her inside my head.  For just a moment we share everything.
    “Thought his name was Matthew?” her husband says, and we laugh.  The easy laugh of the living.  We watch Peter get to the water and stop just clear of it.  I take a step towards him but Tomek holds my elbow and keeps me steady. 
    “He’s fine, love,” he murmurs.
    “You have a lovely accent,” the woman says.  “Scottish?”
    “Very good,” Tomek says, smiling easily. 
    “I went to Scotland once.  I was a lot younger then.  It was before you, Henry.”
    Henry.  In another life my father never met my mother.  In another life my father never left Bee on the steps of the post office.  In another life I was never born. 
    There are a hundred lives.  A hundred different possibilities.
    “Did you see me?” Peter asks.  Beside me again, pulling at my arm.  “I let the flower go.”
    “Good job,” I say, “I saw you.”
    “Thank you,” Tomek says.  “That was very kind of you.”
    “There are plenty of flowers for all of them,” the woman says.
    “Say thanks again,” I say, nudging Peter.
    “Thank you,” he shrugs.
    “Take care, then,” the man says.  “Take care of them.”
    “Always,” Tomek says.  It’s strange what we promise people we have never met before, people we will never meet again.  It’s strange what they can convince us to say. 
    “Did you see me?  I threw it,” Peter says again. 
    “You were very good,” I say.
    “Really, though, have you done that before?” Tomek says.
    But Peter is a puppy again.  He doesn’t answer.  He runs away from us, laughing and barking and on all fours and flying across the sand until he is a blur.

an excerpt from a longer piece

by Katrina