colic ovenbird My mother says I was a colicky baby. I arrived in the world screaming and didn’t stop for months. No amount of soothing or bouncing or singing or patting would calm me down. My parents paced the house holding me in their arms while my brand new face turned red with rage and grief. Colic is a mystery to science. No one can explain why some otherwise healthy babies cry endlessly upon finding themselves in the world. It doesn’t seem like such a mystery to me. I was terrified. I didn’t ask for my soul to be plucked from the void and placed in a prison of muscle and bone. I didn’t ask to have windows in my skull that let everything in. I didn’t ask for a heart so heavy, one I am forced to roll eternally upwards only to have it slip from my grasp so I must begin again. I didn’t ask for ninety odd years during which my task is to roam the lonely earth desperately searching for others who might understand the particular shape of my suffering. So when I was forced from the rocking warmth of a gentle sea and made to press my hands to the searing heat of life’s cruel embers, I screamed to be sent back to the arms of the stars. I never stopped screaming, though I learned to do it silently. And now that I’ve traversed half my years and I’m closer to a forever dreamless sleep I find, alongside the wish that I was never born, a sharp hewn hope that I will never leave. 251228 ... nr i apparently was a colicky baby too. i eventually stopped screaming but probably never should've. 251228 what's it to you? who go blather from