Vina Nguyen's "What Is Mine"

Yes, Ethan?

Can you help me draw the guitar? He has already set our papers on the coffee table along with a tidy bucket of crayons.

Which one?

Orange one on the wall. His legs curl commas under him while long lashes fan bonnets around his eyes. He has his dad’s charcoal brows—thick, dark, a definite shape. Definite genetics. Nature calling attention to itself: I made this. A stamp on the forehead: Mine.

I draw and explain, See how this line is a third longer than the other? Yes… Like that, I say as he draws. We take turns watching and drawing as I watch and draw out what I can see of myself in him.

He gets up and sits in my lap, pointy chin nudging my forearm as he laughs. He wants to be rocked and sang to. A lullaby, he begs. I sing him one. Then another. He crescents himself between my arms, nestling his cheek against my chest, eyes closing. I need to stop looking, stop searching. How selfish love is.

Everything that isn’t from him is from her. I envision a narrow-framed woman with the slim-eyed gaze of a hawk, keenly observing and setting things in place, memorizing exactly what you say and promise. A relentless, sharp woman with long, slim fingers. I’ve never met her. I only know of her through Ethan as she knows of me. He is our portal.

Really, I’m wasting my time. I don’t even want children. Didn’t. Don’t?

He’s fallen asleep, soother thumb between teeth, his breaths are of the ocean. He breathes like his dad.

All afternoon we’ve sketched guitars. Our waxed papers of yellow and orange streaks are closely identical. His dexterity, I decide, is mine.