Ghazal: Before I Did

A child at the station turns, calls me by a name I chose before I did. Runs through three strangers, catches my coat, says Mum before I did. Her front teeth crowd slightly. Left eyebrow splits at the tail. She got my bad habit of biting the inside of her thumb before I did. I kneel. Ask who she came with. Ask again. Her eyes roll: the rather little cruelty of someone who knew me before I did. From her pocket: a photograph softened white at every fold. Me, older. Her, newborn. My mother holding us both, looking tired before I did. Look. Flip. Date. Count backwards. The year printed there has not reached us. Still she has grown through it before I did. Police arrive. Questions sharpen. Where is your father? Address? Birthday? She answers each. Gives my phone number, then the next number I will own before I did. Her father’s name means nothing. Then she says it again. Something in my body flinches toward him before I did. They search records. No child. No man. No school with her listed. She sits swinging both legs, furious that the world has forgotten what it knew before I did. I buy her juice. She hates orange. Of course. Chooses apple, peels the straw paper into one long strip, the trick I learned at nine, before I did. At dusk they tell me I can’t take her home. She laughs.Uncontent. Unfrightened. The laugh of a daughter hearing her mother lie badly before I did. Then grips my sleeve… You always leave first. Train screams in. Doors split. Bodies shove between us. Move. Reach. Lose her. By the time I clear the carriage, no child. Only the photograph on the platform. I pick it up. My mother is gone from the picture now.The baby too. Just me, older, seated beside an empty hospital bed, holding somebody’s little blue coat against my mouth, already mourning her before I did.