there_there ovenbird I’m a dark portent. That’s how the new mothers feel about me. They sit in a circle with newborn babies in their laps while I tell them all the ways their minds might collapse under the weight of motherhood. I’m a postpartum grim reaper, a hideous creature beckoning them to a metaphorical death. I watch a woman in blue yoga pants struggle to keep her face on straight. It slips towards tears. “I didn’t want to see you here,” she says to me. “I didn’t want to hear the truth you carry.” I place an empathetic hand on her knee. The dads are all playing darts at the other end of the room, oblivious to the existential plight of their partners. A toddler trips along a precarious ledge twelve feet above the ground. His face glows with curiosity. The mothers are looking inward. The fathers are throwing darts. The child falls, though I don’t see it happen. What I see is the aftermath—the men gathered ‘round. The scream when the boy’s father lifts him from the ground and finds that his skull is caved in from the impact. There’s no blood and the child is screaming, not dead but catastrophically injured. He will never be the same. I meet the eyes of the woman in the blue yoga pants. Her baby fusses in her lap, oblivious to the drama unfolding. Her eyes say, “I told you so.” And maybe it’s true. Maybe I’m a dark portent. Or maybe this is just the way of the world. Maybe it is always about to be a nightmare and the best we can do is pat each other’s arms and say, in our horror, “there, there.” 260530 what's it to you? who go blather from