I May Never See Them Again

Sometimes it feel like my chest will implode. It will cave in from being empty and rotting on the inside.

How to decribe this sadness? I haven't seen my kids in so long. I don't know what they look like. I know they must look different. Four years. The major transformation. Teenagers, then young adults. All kid years are transformative years. I feel resentment at parents that have children, have their children period.

It is not the pain it was before. The pain of every day being dark, one I did not think I could live through. The pain raw, open, blood fresh on the surface.

At first, in every child, I would see my own. A skinny long-limbed girl with thick auburn hair. A stocky, laughing boy with mocking eyes, my middle son. An awkward, knock-kneed boy with fair skin, large clear brown eyes, halting speech, my eldest.

Sometimes it hits hard, air sucked from my lungs, like I am drowning. A scab pulled off a wound that has begun to close up, ripped fresh. Always I feel a dull, constant ache.

There is a real possibilty I don't ever want to look at head-on. But it is there. I may never see them again. I may never know them as they are. The possibility is that all I will have of my children are my memories. The looks backward in the rear-view mirror that are never quite accurate. The feelings that are unquestionable.