Yesterday, in stores, on the street, I laughed, waved, and clicked my tongue at twelve babies, wheeled, cradled, backpacked, or carefully led by twelve women, yes, all twelve, women. He is probably the only man on the Eastern Seaboard walking into a grocery at ten A.M. without a wedding ring and with a baby. The woman he leers at over piled grapefruit will want to laugh but won‘t, because she‘s flattered, then will, because she‘s flattered. No wonder the baby is making friends with other babies.

But I can‘t compete with strangers, pretending to be lured, as I pretended to be, by his obvious glances, by his baby. He will stay with one of them or another of them, or he won‘t stay. He will come back, or he won‘t come back. Whatever his decisions, I knew from the start they would have nothing to do with me.

All last night I drifted, nearing sleep but never finding it. I miss him. According to plan, my ache spreads. I pit myself against myself. I’m losing.

I want another of our silent breakfasts, his face lowered to his bowl, his coffee spoon overturned near his mug. I want to break his mug. I want to do something to him.

He brooded. He thought he was entitled to brood. But his horrors, described on cold nights, were no more horrible than mine; he just thought they were. The stories he told and I listened to, I would never presume to tell. And if I did, who would listen to me?

Because he only liked my hair down, when I pinned it up to wash my face, I closed the bathroom door, but I closed the door for both of us. What he didn't want to see, and more, I wanted never to show him. And what he has seen I want now, impossibly, to take from him, before he mocks it to amuse his next woman.

His woman. His women. He‘s stuffed a battered envelope with snapshots of us, already including one of me, full lengths, with legs crossed or in a blur, crossing, heads turning, mouths speaking. He interrupted us and then, camera swinging from his shoulder, moved on. His ex-wife, mother of the baby, is actually his third ex-wife. From the glossy pile I try to guess the first two, but can‘t. Bodies, faces, wives, lovers, blend. We look tired; we are tired. Thinking practically, we want a good nights sleep and wonder if he'll leave soon. But we also think our shadowed faces have been brushed by moth wings. We feel more haunted than he. When he whispered what he thought was sad, we spared him what we knew was sadder. We let him pout, in a corner, alone. But even children keep their secrets. Right now, what is he thinking? All those silent times, what was he thinking?