'That's Our Son', by Carrie Lynn Hawthorne

“I was trying to call Anabelle,” you said, disappointed to hear my voice. You hadn’t talked to us in over a month. Your hair looked like Jesus, your face peeling from sunburn. Though I could see you, you couldn’t see me on your smashed phone screen.

A gold Ford Escort on the beach in Oregon—at least now we knew where you lived. Surviving off protein powder and washing your body in the river. You watched waves crashing on rocks through the windshield. Your dad once told me that when you were little, he would get a tingle in his feet when you would get too close to the edge. I wonder if he tingled when you told us you couldn’t come home.

Earlier, I saw two guys about your age near Whole Foods. One had no shoes and the other slept on the hot concrete next to a dead roach. I wanted to tell your dad to take off his shoes and give them to the man who needed them more. I wished we had the money to do that. We had a bag of groceries from Whole Foods, and I didn’t give them a fucking thing. I just put my head down and kept walking.

When I made my amends to you, I told you my mind was broken. I was not like the other moms. I’m Bipolar, I told you, so you’d have the word for it. You simply said, Me too. You hugged me. All our tears were fish, dead and bloated at the surface.

Carrie Lynn Hawthorne is a writer and mother from California. You can find her work in The Hennepin Review, Sunlight Press, Cultural Daily, and many more. For more information about Carrie and links to previous publications, go to carrielynnhawthorne.com.