I am searching for a dead baby named Amen.
Amen would have become a strong swimmer, a mediocre chemist, and an admirer of Rachmaninoff. Amen would have had two siblings and an allergy to bees. Amen would have been ambidextrous, vegan, and a weekend ornithologist. Amen would have learned how to tie reef knots at summer camp, how to stroke a lover’s skin on a long road trip filled with corn chips and melted chocolate bars licked straight from their wrappers. Amen would have called me every other weekend, except when he forgot, which would be often. Amen would have been terrible with money. Just terrible.
There are so many places Amen could be, but all I know is that he is not with me. Perhaps Amen lies in the hillside with all the waiting cicadas, their hushed breaths rasping through tiny spiracles. Maybe Amen’s carbon feeds the wildflowers growing over my septic field. Certainly Amen is still inside of me, cells in my blood, an invader who will never surrender. I want to believe Amen is in the air I breathe, the well water that washes away the semen on my thigh, the sunshine that turns my shoulders pink, then red. My search is as endless as it is pointless. Amen is everywhere and nowhere, the baby I can never find.
Laws of conservation state that nothing in this universe can ever truly be lost, so I stop searching and instead wait for Amen to find me. I wait in line at the grocery store, with a dozen eggs and a jar of Kosher pickles in my basket. I wait as a cheerful dental hygienist scrapes plaque from my teeth. I wait as the birches shake down their yellow leaves on the path where I run. I wait out blizzards, frost heaves, tulip blooms, and the yellowjackets that nest under the front steps. I wait through board meetings, birthday parties, high-spirited musicals, television shows streamed on ever-changing devices. I wait an entire lifetime until I understand that waiting itself is a form of prayer. And at the end of prayer there is always Amen.
