A Seattle hospital was the last place
you’d catch me, yet there I was.
If no one needed to know
what I found out about Erin,
what good would it do?
I breathed the truth
over hazelnut coffee
sweet like syrup
to sip what’s left
in a cup of jitters
that had nothing on her
vivacious connection.
I could talk around her,
but thinking had become
that of a nature second to none.
Erin chatted my ear off
as though we’d been friends
since way back when, as kids,
she chased me on a playground
somewhere in a small town back east,
but I’m from the Northwest.
Erin grew up in the Deep South.
Where? I didn’t want to know.
I’d heard things about life for blacks
South of the Mason-Dixon Line.
I was mixed, but people who hated
melanin didn’t acknowledge my white side,
not in the South—not in the Deep South.
Erin moved her bangs behind her ear,
exposing her neck’s rigid lines that meshed
with her sun-kissed complexion.
I debated whether we should
tell our folks we met in LA.
Erin tapped her chin and said New York
was a better route.
Erin’s eyes lit as wide as the first time
we confessed our undying love,
for each other.
A year later, I held her weak,
pale hand on a hospital bed.
We made up cities with rules
and laws drawn from scratch.
After our parents found out
we had a thing going on,
they shunned us.
Mom said I’d regret this.
Erin told her mom to forget us.
She screamed,
and I knew she was ready
to change our lives.
My holler for a doctor echoed
down the evenly lit hallway.
Erin gripped my hand
and dug her nails into my flesh
like the first time we had sex,
groaning with contractions.
I leaned in and pressed my lips
to her glassy head
and moved strands of her hair
that stuck to her face.
I told her it’d be alright.
She said it was easy for me to say.
A doctor and two nurses
entered the room.
Erin delivered the baby,
and we held her
as a precious gift
from God to our sinful hands.
A voice entered the room before
her mom and dad did.
He spilled a calm apology,
and her mother clung
onto his arm as if to say that
she agreed with him.
The nurse washed the baby after
we looked her over.
Shadows approached the room.
Mom and Dad entered the room
and greeted her parents.
And color didn’t matter
because the innocence
of life erases sin.