There was an off-white mattress with a red print of thin and elegant strands that a well-trained florist could tell you were the long red tendrils of a spider lily. The off-whiteness was not a decorative feat, but a marked beat of age and weariness. An occasional loose spring punctured the flabby fabric. Leaning against the wall of the darkened hallway waiting for hands strong enough to hoist it, the mattress resembled a runner too old to compete, gasping for breath against some barrier of firmness. And when those reasonably sturdy hands finally came to grapple with the awkward shape of old and stained silky flesh, the mattress was heaved into the bed of an idle truck to be ferried to the landfill.

     The accumulated stains offered nothing unique in the way of storytelling; coffee and tea, sweat, red wine or blood, blood, red wine, a patch of human urine once played off as catʼs, and deep blue ink. There was, however, one particular stain that had something to say by way of never being able to say it. Off-center on the off-white body of the mattress was an offer of off-whiter color. Careful in all their years as they had been in never letting a drop of semen impregnate the threads of the mattress, the owners had decided, in a spontaneous, primal way, to have a sexual send-off. It was with a smear of irony that the first time the couple chose to be amorous each completely fully clothed, they premiered their seminal work on the alien canvas of a naked mattress. The impulsiveness of the act meant that there was no condom to catch the climax; thus, the logical recourse was to pull out. But—again due to the impromptu nature of the scenario—being fully clothed, neither was expected to bear the load themselves—and so it was with a mixed bolus of relief, nostalgia, panic, and guilt that the mass of semen was projected onto the midriff of the old mattress.    

     It didnʼt bother the mattress that in one contracted moment of sleek muscles its role shifted from a cradle of sleeping humans to a cradle of damp chromosomes. Nothing could bother the mattress, because it was inanimate and had no means by which to be bothered. It could never be hurt or pleased. It could never become hurt or pleased in the future by means of cerebral development and sentient growth. But the semen…

     As the wind whipped and winded around the worn plush skin brought on by the speed of the cruising truck, the semen slowly dried and shriveled. Shriveling, too, was the chance at experience the human form who could come from this semen could have. Shriveling was the chance for the first slurp of apple sauce; for the first fit of tickles; for the first crawl through grass to eat a beetle. Shriveling was the chance at forming the memories to recall until death; at admiring the beginnings of a row of teeth; at petting a cat and unintentionally listening to ska. Shriveling was the chance to kiss someone and feel it between the legs; to grind the earth between fingers; to build a pulley. Shriveling was the chance to know something unshakably; to defend a loved one; to gather wisdom and share it with a growing family. Shriveling was the chance to know that death is inevitable, and accept, deep, deep down in the axiom of your gut that it is okay.

     What a pining glimpse of the pleasure of life! A future being denied is the denial of the pleasures that make a life even worth it. 

     But shriveling also were those chances unwanted, the other shoe. Shriveling was the chance at sitting in diapers filled with urine and shit; at growing pains; at dealing with strangers. Shriveling was  the chance for someone to steal possessions; for physical violence; for learning that mom hates dad.  Shriveling was the chance to willingly hurt another being, and to know it will happen again and again; to fail and regret; to love someone who doesnʼt return it. Shriveled were the chances of euthanizing an aunt; taking a son to chemotherapy; having a partner betray; betraying a partner; knowing how to solve a problem but lacking the resources to do it; being abandoned by family because of age; crippling doubt and indecision; being powerless against injustice; forever fearing death and grasping until the last moment to try and make life good.

     Is there an equinox between the possibility of day or night for the precarious unborn? Can we judge and guess? Is it wrong to bring beings into the night, and right to bring them into the day?

     One half of what could have been a human was now lifeless crust. These questions stood beside it, asking whether to lament the potential life of pleasure lost, or feeling relief at a life of pain avoided. Yet without knowing which course would have been, in what state of mind should the question be answered? Was it service, or disservice?

     What did the old mattress feel as the man who had nestled into it for almost fourteen years gracelessly tossed it into a heap of other rejects? Nothing. And the stain that would never be human, what did it feel? What could it feel, when the desire to be created depends on being created? As the crusted semen flaked and the last sperm died, somewhere a well-trained florist was telling a customer that higan-bana, or spider lily, means lost memory and represented the equinox.