We sit around your baby monitor while you sleep, and it is like we are gathered around a campfire. But instead of leaning in for warmth and light, we lean in to hear what you have to say. You tell us that we are pretty good parents. You tell us that you like to play balls and cups and bath and yum yum food. You tell us that you like to play music and dance and clap clap clap. We lean in closer. You just said something about Easter eggs, or maybe it was beer and kegs. We shush each other with violent gestures, even though we have both been silent this entire time. We lean in. You tell us that there will be enough in savings for college. Maybe even grad school. You tell us that there will be enough in savings for a few vacations and for two weddings and for a semi-decent retirement. You like baa baa black sheep. You like turtle and duck, and you tell us that you like milk. You tell us that there might be an earthquake in Timbuktu and we shudder because what can we do. You tell us that there might be a flood or a fire. You tell us death, and you tell us pain, and you tell us there are good things, too. You like ball and basket and book. You like mama and dada. We lean. You tell us that we are safe and that we are good and that we are kind. Stop listening, you tell us. It’s okay, you say. The line of red lights on the baby monitor jumps and glows like a campfire, and we do not move. Even when you say, Get up. Stop leaning, you say. But we can’t. No matter what you tell us, we just can’t
Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and chosen as winner of Late Night Library’s Debut-litzer Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee for both fiction and poetry and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, SAFTA’s Firefly Farms, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories and poetry have appeared in American Short Fiction, Guernica, The New Guard, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, B O D Y, Hobart, and Cream City Review, among others. Her story “Ramona” was featured in a Huffington Post piece on flash fiction and also selected by Lily Hoang for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology. Sarah was the 2012-13 Pen Parentis Fellow. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now lives and writes in her home state of Indiana, where she is a winner of the Indiana Authors Award and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellow.
Photo by Clark Cruz