Stephanie Ann Farra, Mother in the Time of COVID (Artist Website, Instagram)
Photograph on panchromatic film
Courtesy of the artist
If one more person asks me if I want to have a baby,
I’ll be no closer to the answer. At the restaurant,
the kind with paper tablecloths and crayons, a friend says,
“Don’t have kids. Think of the environmental impact.”
Later, he’ll leave early to pick up his daughter. When my water
arrives with a straw in it, I see a pile of my imaginary child’s
unwrapped straws, plastic bottles, yogurt cups, and spoons—
a lifetime’s worth. You could jump into it
like a playground ball pit—a pool of plastic the size of a warehouse.
I drink my water through the straw and swim in the pit,
but the spoon handles poke my eyes. I squint and then have goggles on,
also made of plastic. I don’t like goggles, but my mother
makes me wear them. I have a yellow suit and yellow hair
that will look green by September. If I swim
to my mother without stopping, she will catch me and we can play.
She’ll let me float in my turtle-patterned tube,
she’ll buy me ice cream from the snack bar, but first
I have to swim to her. My goggles have come loose
and the chlorine stings my eyes. No matter how hard I swim,
she stays the same distance from me, until she nears the wall.
She was backing away! I reach her, sputtering and betrayed,
too tired not to wrap my arms around her neck. I wish
she’d get her hair wet. When I grow up and have kids,
I’ll get my hair all-the-way wet. My daughter and I
will take a deep breath, blow bubbles to the bottom of the pool,
and push up fast to the air. When she swims to me,
I won’t ever back away. But then, will she learn? And by the time
she’s old enough to have a baby of her own,
how many islands of plastic will crowd the oceans?
I have drunk nearly all my water.
The straw sounds like a drain on the side of the deep end.
I swim to the surface of the trash pit, lie on my back,
and sink a little, recognizing every piece: my favorite bottled water,
the best brand of yogurt, the spoons I’ve used when traveling.
I stare up at the warehouse ceiling, where electric fans spin and spin
and will keep spinning until they run out of energy, of time.