Chimera

There are legends written along the concave curve

of a newborn’s cradled ribs.

They are prophecies.

like this one:

I will love my son so much

I won’t be able to let him go.

I will carry his cellular traces in my streams

as his shadows sewn to my limbs become

constant companions long after his birth.

Years ago

I read

doctors discovered mothers

can carry the genetic material of their children

for a lifetime after birth.

They call this a chimerism.

Definition chimera:

A mythical, fire-breathing monster, commonly drawn

with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.

This is my future.

Picture me a Frankenstein of genetic tissue.

I become a fire-breathing monster

a pieced together patchwork of biology

so thankful

I might still have him with me

even if he is on the other side of the world.

So maybe this doesn’t matter when doctors ask,

why do women, more often than men, develop autoimmune diseases?

In fetal microchimerism
they think

they found an answer.

Children’s cells left behind in mother’s blood

might be mistaken for genetic guerrillas  

so her body turns on itself.

Immune defenses destroying indiscriminate

and ruthless

I glimpse a possible future.

When my son is born

I will not see where I end and he begins.

The slow severing of this umbilicus will be excruciating

a premeditated amputation that must come I know

I will still reach to hold his hand when he is not there…

the reminiscent shadow of a lost limb.

When he wants to go

for the first time, to a friend’s house

without me.

I will let him

imagining every worst case scenario.

Scenes filled

with matches, lighter fluid, aerosol cans,

swimming pools, and second story balconies.

When he comes home

I will be hiding relief in my back pockets.

When he falls in love

I will not ask him to stop

even if I see heartbreak following.

But every time he hurts

I will find my own body embattled with his aching.

I will wear wounds

as deliberate decorative laced scars.

Here is a monster in the making.

But doctors offer another possibility for the chimera.

These left behind strayed cells

inside a mother might become warriors.

Her children’s DNA remnant ribbons running
through capillaries to veins

might fight to repair her damaged body.

This is a son making good at the molecular level.

This is my foretelling.

I will love him so much

I will be afraid to take pictures

celluloid stealing moments too precious for permanence.

He will be beautiful with small things.

Like breathing when he’s sleeping.

The only time in 24 hours he’s quiet.

Like running beside my car.

“I am happy to see you” drummed out in every full throttle footprint.

Like wearing chocolate as war paint.

Like patting my hand gentle

When I can’t talk, because life

has gotten bottled and stoppered

at the back of my throat.

I can’t breathe.

And my son will whisper,

“Mommy, it’ll be okay.”

These moments will be butterfly dust

caught in whorls of fingerprints dissolved to

universal matter blown away with a breath.

I will barely notice as they leave me just

a bit lighter
running him banner streaming

through chains and ladders and spirals in

links and pairs and unraveling predictions.