My Zygote
It is forbidden to love you,
You product of our genes;
When Chloe held you on her finger,
You were more than what you seemed.
“What do you think this is?”
She asked me of your fleshy, warped pink skin;
“A scabby speck of blood,” I yawned coldly,
“You’re shocked you’ve had a period yet again?”
“I show you all my periods,” she stammered,
“You should know none look like this.”
“Maybe you have cancer,” I offered,
“Or an infected veiny cyst.”
“We prayed I wasn’t pregnant.
This speck proves our fear was true.”
I unleashed a cynical, sinister smirk and spat:
“More likely that I ably fucked your G-spot out of you.”
My answer might’ve pained her,
But if she winced, I didn’t see;
Her tears had dried before they’d fallen,
Crumbling salty crystals that looked like dust to me.
“This was to be our unwanted child,” she murmured.
“The unplanned culmination of you and me;
We’d have taught her all our viewpoints,
We’d have told her what to read.”
“I shouldn’t be such a lush,” she whispered.
“I could have been a better host;
That insecurity coursing through me,
That’s what turned our mishap to a ghost.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she choked,
But then apparently changed her mind;
Her thumb shot up, then it crashed down,
That’s when I knew I’d been so blind!
Seeing your gooey pale core blast past your soft shell,
Even Vesalius would faint dead;
It was Zygote Munchausen Syndrome!
Infanto-Gynocide right to the head!
“What did you do?!”
I screamed with passion when I finally realized,
“He was our zygote, half you/half me,
But mostly me - he had my eyes!”
Her attention strayed from me,
Though my attention she was after;
She held her digits to the sunlight,
Illuminating your dismembered, disrupted, splatter.
“This could have been your brain,” Chloe said,
“A mind full of madness and hate;
Your spine was rubbery,
Your casing blubbery,
A life spent hiding, you’d never mate.
“If a boy, you’d be a rapist,
If a girl you’d be a whore,
Your body would be ugly,
And doubtlessly deformed.
“I wonder if you had a soul, then again, it couldn’t have come from me,
And James, even if he had one, is too cheap to spread it in his seed;
No, you would have been a monster, miscarrying justice and harmony,
And so I miscarried you, you fiend, to save the world and keep us free.”
At the time I thought she meant it,
I didn’t doubt her spiteful barrage;
Demeaning everything with value,
“Put down that stupid ancient scroll. Let’s sniff glue in my garage!”
“If eyes are the windows to the soul,” I shrieked,
“Eye sockets are the holes to the brain;
If your vacant orbs weren’t blocking them,
I’d see your chemicals wishing me pain.
“You took pleasure in popping part of me,
The only half of us worth saving;
And don’t say it was to hurt yourself,
Self-worship is your ceaseless craving.”
“Abortion’s so expensive,” she laughed.
“Be glad we saved 200 bucks;
We’d have named it something stupid,
I bet we would have called it Jervuck.”
“Okay, enough with all the slander,” I cried.
“I can fill the blanks myself;
‘You’re no child of God, dead one,
You’re a gargoyle straight from hell!’”
“Make your choice!” she challenged me.
“Just out of curiosity;
Would you bring our zygote back,
If it put me crushed on your pinky?”
“Here I should tread carefully,” thought I.
“She always sets a trap.”
How swiftly I lost my own advice,
And tripped a thousand fatal snaps!
“There are things I like about you,” I mused,
“That I can’t deny;
Your upturned nose corrects my flat nose,
Your optimism outshines my sighs.
“My skin, it’s full of pockmarks,
My language skills are weak at best;
Your face is glowing, it’s so flawless,
You speak Basque and Japanese and you were born in Bucharest.
“But when people thought you were my sister,
Is when I most felt swells of pride;
When it appeared we were related,
That’s when I knew you’d be my bride.
“Yes I’ve always wished I had a twin,
A second me to call my own;
He’d understand my every move,
A cheat through life — we’d pave our world with Styrofoam;
Yet sometimes…. now… when I look at you?
I see more alien than clone.
“Your hair, it lacks my reddish tinge,
Your chin’s not dimple-free like mine;
Your eyes are blue, that’s true at least,
But not pure blue, tragically…
Yellow freckles the bane of thine.
“Sure, that’s not so bad, you claim,
When most couples think opposites attract;
But now I’ve seen true love close up,
And still see it — squished on your finger, in fact.
“This fluke might have had your jagged teeth,
It could have lacked my assertive drive;
But one thing’s indisputable:
It was more like me than you are,
Even though it was never alive.
“I knew my zygote for a second,
It was translucent, damp potentiality;
But my love for it eclipses my love for you,
And your opaque, half-baked reality.”
“This will end us,” Chloe gasped.
So I thought I’d prove her wrong;
The rest of our courtship, however,
Was awkward, painful, and not so very long.
We took field trips to museums,
And watched fetuses develop from jar to jar;
You were a one-of-a-kind creation,
But Phase Two – that soggy, wrinkled splotch - wasn’t very far.
Chloe and I drifted apart, nevertheless,
All along our only purpose was you;
Which means we had no purpose at all then,
Cause we’d have sucked your brains out with a vacuum tube.
Let’s say you would have made it, though,
Fought against all we could throw;
Amazing you got as far as you did,
Swimming upstream ‘gainst booze, nicotine,
And ill-timed birth control.
“It’s a pleasure and a right to be here,”
Would have been your first words to the world;
A world giddy to crush that excitement,
With bureaucracy, rashes, obligation, headaches, gravity;
(All that boring shit it hurls.)
You’ll never get to be circumcised,
Or have your first bloody period in class;
I’d have beat my recessive traits out of you:
Vicarious living, yes,
You’d have paid for the pain of my past.
In a sense, death might have saved you,
Your life, it could have been quite bland;
Chloe thinks you’d be a dictator,
But you might have been just any man.
I’ll never forget you, young one,
And though your days were few,
We knew you better than real parents know their grown children;
Oh, to hold you in my hand and poke you.
You were a silly putty creature,
A life without a face,
A spongy giant blood-clot,
To our families, a disgrace.
A menstrual-battling action-figure Chloe found in her underwear;
I loved you more for my flaws than her perfections;
Off of your pink glisten,
I saw the reflection of my tangled hair.
- By Rhys Southan
