Last night, I had a big dream.
It was unexpectedly vivid, unexpectedly prolonged, unexpectedly memorable.
It centered around me having a kid. My own. Which…
The actual action of giving birth took place, but as it was a dream, I didn’t suffer too long or linger in the logistics of it. Wouldn’t that be a neat trick? I just ended up with a kid whose father was someone I couldn’t quite recall. I couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. A blurry-faced amalgamation, surely, of every available masculine energy I’d ever took a shine to. It was odd to hold it. I was proud and happy about it which doesn’t seem like me at all – I mean, maybe I would if I would, but a surprise baby? I’d like to think something in me would be clear that something was was off about that.
It was a little boy with the oddest, weirdest, most awfully surreal name: Tagaragua Nicaragua. First name, last name? Who knows? Who decided that? I have no idea, it wasn’t me.
I remember thinking we would have to get that changed. Sounds more like a scientific name, a genus and species rather than a newborn. A city in Nicaragua that somehow tucked itself into the far reaches of my mind. Almost a fairy’s cruelty to it, if it wasn’t so charming.
I explained to the assembled crowd of family that we could call him Tag…for now. He was a very sweet, almost plasticine baby that glowed ever so slightly like you could only see him through a gauzy, soft focus lens. A baby Jesus-y looking baby. I showed him to my aunt, and her delight with me and this squirmy little thing all swaddled up in dish towels still gives me the shivers half a day later. I showed it to my grandfather and he was just as happy. Everyone seemed fine with the fact that I would turn up with a kid. Everyone seemed beyond fine…delighted.
And then the kid started talking. I suppose that’s when he informed me what his name was. I asked my mother if it was weird for a baby to talk on the first day. She said it was fine, and it has smart parents. Then he started wriggling so much, I set him on the floor and he started stretching like was Stretch Armstrong and almost walking.
I woke up completely weirded out.
But somewhere in this brain pantry, in the spice rack my brain pulls from to make the astral soup I sail through each night, alone, there is a jar of baby. And in that jar of baby there is a bay leaf where the fairies have written, because they are cruel, and because they knew I would laugh, in tiny, whirling script: Tagaragua Nicaragua.
Fare you well in the other worlds, Tag. I hope you do not blame me too much for trusting you with your own life and leaving you to it. Such has been my fate and I’ve done what I could with it. Find me again some night when you are no longer sure of your footing and your mortal mother will tell you your good fortune.
