All

By, Wendiann Alfieri

For the girl named Tuesday

The mother screams as soon as they bring the newborn girl back into the room

he’s not looking at her child

She doesn’t care for physical pain

The girl named Tuesday, her eyes blue and bright

Her pupils are the stars against the blue background

Her mother is alone and doesn’t see them yet

She’s on the phone

she hears his voice

The baby wriggles in the arms of the staff crying as though she can understand

The mother, he’s Telling her he loves her

he wish he had a choice

But to tell the child he loves her

he hopes she can have a voice

he loves them all

he’s sorry he has to make this call

Tuesday will love to ice skate

She will love the winter

never go on beaches cause she hates the sand, cause there will be a time that her friend dumped a bucket of sand from the sandcastle mold onto Tuesday’s head by accident

The phone clicks off the mother is still screaming

Tuesday’s favorite year will be when she’s forty three

she’ll settle with her partner

Finally getting married

After their on and off had been continually on for a few years

The mother is flipping out now as the grave situation becomes graver

Even though Tuesday’s life is growing

Tuesday’s favorite thing to eat will be chocolate frosting

Which will nauseate her friends

And make them even more confused when she tells them she hates chocolate bars

she loves that gross frosting they always sell, store brand at the old food store that her mom will insist on buying all the groceries at.

The mother doesn’t know what’s happening

no one does right now

Long Island is where Tuesday is born

Tuesday’s first word will be her mother’s name

Ironically not saying “ mama” but saying her mothers name which is Beth

she’ll never call her mom not because she didn’t love her or anything but just cause it was her first word so why anything else?

The mother is given a syringe to calm her down in the hospital

Beth was just a secretary at a local podiatrists office

She always smelled like gingerbread cookies because of a perfume for kids for the holidays that she bought way too much of and loved so much she’d buy more every year

she was a world class spelling bee champion who purposely misspelled a word because she didn’t want to win and she’d always regret it, she’d study the dictionary for those things like it was the bible

Now though as she’s sedated

the confusion runs rampant through the hospital

she’ll never love those things quite the same way anymore

It will hurt to think of her secrets because only her husband knew them all.

in this hospital the drs and nurses are calling their families

so are all the other patients

Beth’s pain will hurt her worse when she wakes up

her love for that child

She’ll love the child forever

the child is all of him she has left

All throughout the world

There were marks and Tina and Anna’s and Kirks

Some who lived to tell the tale that caused them to be called a survivor

And no one will know the Beth before all of this, least of all Beth herself

Tuesday will never know what her mother felt that day

Of losing her husband and being alone

The mother

She’s so cold

But he is not

Tuesday will love to go shoe shopping

only at stores that don’t have sales

Cause she will have an expensive taste in where her shoes come from

Even though her mother would pretend to buy her Christmas present shoes from that store

And Tuesday she’ll never tell the difference

The day that Tuesday was born is hell for everyone

Across sea to shining sea

more phone calls were made

more footage was played

the more they understood

The less they wish they did