wound. When I asked the doctor if I would have been one of those mothers who died in childbirth in the last century he just smiled and did not answer. So, it seems, I would have killed you too.
When you were a grain of rice, slowly building in my body, I watched videos that calmly explained how safe mifepristone and misoprostol were. One creates an “inhospitable environment,” the other purges the womb. You swelled to a blueberry and I was still thinking it over. Grape, kumquat, fig, and still I did not know what to do. So, as I watched the blue veins snake beneath the swollen orchard of my body, I decided to let you do what all fruit does: grow.
Your father wouldn’t sign the divorce papers from his hospital bed. It was well over a year since your birth but I threw up every morning in those months like something new was taking root. We moved up the street. You grew to two, three, four, and on.
Last year our balcony played host to a family of sparrows that built a nest of twigs and tape, newspaper bags, and twine. One day we found the naked chick, eyes gray, yellow beak opened for food, dead on the driveway. It had fallen from the nest and I explained that happens sometimes. And you looked at my open palms, cradling creation and death. I'd have killed you but you are here.
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