The first unblinking baby is an anomaly. Facial nerve palsy, the doctors speculate, offering lubricating eye drops, soft tape for sleep. Soon all babies are born unblinking, their dark eyes gazing into their mother’s face, faces of doctors, families, neighbors. Our faces. Babies are supposed to be cute. But these wide eyes that never close, like snakes or sharks. We are glass. Our babies see every withered promise, every muddy heart.
We scrutinize old pictures of sleeping babies, those half-moons of closed lids, thick dark lashes brushing their orbicularis oculi muscle. We watch old videos of awake babies: splashing and babbling and blinking in the tub; licking plates of mashed squash, orange goo on their blinking lashes; wailing into a kitten stuffie, blinking tears into its fur. We cradle babydolls that kick their chubby legs, that coo and laugh and cry. That blink spontaneously.
They are voiceless, our babies. No whimpers, cries, or giggles, just those huge dark eyes, peering at us. Their rare smiles luminous as a snow moon rising over Denali Peak. Congressional meetings, Supreme Court hearings, Presidential briefings: the babies are lined up in baby rockers, and their stares hold the future, our yesterdays trailing behind like a chain of rusty nails.
Claudia Monpere’s flash appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Split Lip, Craft, and elsewhere. She won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review, Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine, and 2023 Smokelong workshop prize. She has work in Best Small Fictions 2024, forthcoming in Best Microfictions 2025.
"Our babies see every withered promise, every muddy heart." A chilling glimpse into what we may become... heartbreaking, stunning, brilliant.
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