Quickening
They attribute something celestial and other to the blood we lose every month, a cycle kept by phases of the moon.
It is mundane. A nuisance of iron drippings and musky rot. Useless confines soaked into cloth and cotton, landfill.
I swallowed pills to prevent the alternative. I am certain of what I do not want.
In my moments of greatest clarity, my mind has not changed. What I currently bear in my body, this creature that swells and swallows, streching and kicking like it is already aware of the discomfort I intend to drag it towards, is something that causes apprehension, honest, primal fear.
I am not so arrogant that I can pretend that I am in any way ready for this.
Nausea comes in paroxysms of retching, I ache when I sleep, stand, sit. I am ill with something ancient and beyond my mortal comprehension, and I must remind myself that it is temporary, this urgent, screaming desire to peel the very skin from my bones and be free of sensation, of being somehow tethered to the reality of something that lurks adjacent to the abject, the growth of it that I cannot - will not be able to contain.
But if I am still, silent, calm, I am almost certain I can feel it stir.
It is fearless, unwilling and it concerns itself not with what I wish.
Against my palm, she pushes back, and I am sorry. So sorry for the pain that will come, for the life she did not ask for.
It is all I can do to be gentle, to find patience.
I will love her and it is all I can do.
It is mundane. A nuisance of iron drippings and musky rot. Useless confines soaked into cloth and cotton, landfill.
I swallowed pills to prevent the alternative. I am certain of what I do not want.
In my moments of greatest clarity, my mind has not changed. What I currently bear in my body, this creature that swells and swallows, streching and kicking like it is already aware of the discomfort I intend to drag it towards, is something that causes apprehension, honest, primal fear.
I am not so arrogant that I can pretend that I am in any way ready for this.
Nausea comes in paroxysms of retching, I ache when I sleep, stand, sit. I am ill with something ancient and beyond my mortal comprehension, and I must remind myself that it is temporary, this urgent, screaming desire to peel the very skin from my bones and be free of sensation, of being somehow tethered to the reality of something that lurks adjacent to the abject, the growth of it that I cannot - will not be able to contain.
But if I am still, silent, calm, I am almost certain I can feel it stir.
It is fearless, unwilling and it concerns itself not with what I wish.
Against my palm, she pushes back, and I am sorry. So sorry for the pain that will come, for the life she did not ask for.
It is all I can do to be gentle, to find patience.
I will love her and it is all I can do.