It’s been four months. I grow bigger and so does my mother’s belly. The cuts and bruises are gone, but the hurt inside her festers like an infected wound. I feel it everywhere.

She dreams of him often, my father. Though he was a stranger to her before that morning, his face is as clear to her as any memory she’s ever had. Sometimes she’s able to run away in the dreams, but more often, my father knocks her down on the running trail, and she lives it all again. She wakes crying, sometimes screaming. When this happens, I send her beautiful, soothing thoughts and images and hope they’ll take hold in the quiet places-the spaces in between her churning emotions. She hasn’t noticed yet, there’s too much agitation. The world is unfair, my mother thinks, ugly and tainted. She hates most everything. I don’t blame her for that. But I do wish she wouldn’t hate me.