There’s something about being a baby in an adult body that is so cosmopolitan and interrogative that I can’t tell if we should like it, but I know we shouldn’t hate it.

We’re losing everything. My money goes to waste buying new lipstick to replace the one I lost the other day. My yogurt tastes bland because my cinnamon must have gotten lost after moving for the third time. Packed away in an unopened box, or left at my last place? I can’t find any of it anymore and honestly, lately I don’t care to try.

Our dwindling money, little knowledge of Roth IRAs, and no plan or prospects for the near future. Yet we keep going. I don’t know if anything I knew before is correct, but I’ll keep going.

Existing in this emptiness is extraordinary. It’s frightening. It’s quiet. There’s nothing to do, and yet, there is everything I could do, if only I knew what I should do.

Being a baby in an adult body is a process. We’re digging out graves that house our old ghosts and hoping to plant new civilizations. But if they will be good, we won’t know.

For example, I never liked my mother’s temper, only to have hers and worse. She would scream bloody murder till I wanted to stitch my ears closed. But they never did close. They heard everything, and too much, and now no longer care to listen at all. If there were a good song on the radio, I might possibly never hear it. The world has become silent, and I’m trying to hear the wind and crickets again. But I’m afraid I’ll never hear quite right again. And maybe there won’t be a point in the end. But to never try and never know hurts so much worse, worse than the screams of my mother.

So, I open my ears. I listen for sounds. The crunch of a shovel carving its way through dirt, lifting up dust, weeds, dead ants. I blindly dig and till my body, praying for more pioneers, more people with more faith in the future. Until I hear again.

I am a baby learning everything all over again.