METAMORPHOSIS

Accept the metamorphosis 

     ___no matter how slow it is.

For what else really is there to do?

A tote of metal tubes slumps on the floor beside you. A tablet is blotted with acrylic paint. A jar of water stands under your fingers, a dunk tank for your brushes of wood and horsehair. Your easel is splattered like a suncatcher. You mix and mop color: spirals coiling into conversion. Then with swift or slow strokes, you make salt clouds and sand reeds and dune mounds. You make a road too to blue where a rowboat floats behind clay and shadow. I want to walk upon your muted moss, step on your shell and sand, and swim in your blue-gray water, Great Grandmother. Oh, what a distant summer! I remember you in your rocker, swaying gently by the windows in the sharp slanted light of morning. Light so bright, I was sure it would cut you, however, you were stronger than the sun for someone (other than your mother) named you Sunny. We would visit you on Sunday mornings. There was a coin bank with pennies. We would fill it, wind it, and listen to it sing. And monkies in a barrel. And in two glass bowls on your dining room table, golden butterscotch candies in crinkly papers and chalky white peppermints. I remember the single bed in the small rectangle room where Great Grandfather died. Someone (other than his mother) named him Grand. I remember searching for his spirit. I never found it. However, I did convince myself that I felt him, hovering. Now a wall in my house leans beneath your bay. In a speckled gray frame, there is no glass over your sea of serenity. It is dull and pretty. I can touch and look at your brush strokes and be glad of you and the time it took you to paint these salt clouds, these sand reeds, these dune mounds. Perhaps you stood barefoot on the soft sand, quiet company to the gulls, fish, and breeze. Perhaps you stood in your studio, photo in hand. It doesn't matter really. You knew how to drink the air and settle your glassy eyes upon the ground, sky, and sea. You knew that to make beauty, one must first see it. You saw it. I see it too. For what else really is there to do?

A Littler Loss

I call the midwives.


I'm bleeding. I tell the one who answers. 

Many women bleed.

But I never did... with my first, that is.  

That doesn't necessarily matter. Every pregnancy is different. 

Oh. 

However, due to your negative blood type, you need to come in tonight or early tomorrow morning.

I'll come in tonight. 


When I stand and walk to the bathroom, fluid falls from me. I sit on the cold toilet. There is a pop and gush. In the bowl: blood, piss, and water. It's over. Or rather, it's nearly over. 

I leave Scott standing in the kitchen. 

Oh, you're leaving now? He asks. 

I feel the weight of him behind me, not in flesh and feet, but in soul. It wanders around him, trails his body, the yellowish-green bile of melancholia, of helplessness. A shadow in the dark. 

I wobble into my boots, pressing against the wall to steady myself. We move then toward my dark green coat, which I wrap and zip. Knit hat. Scarf.  I trust they will contain me, protect me. When I was a little girl I was so shy. I remember wishing that I could hide inside my shoes. Far from the eyes of strangers, I would live there, cozy and safe, between leather and laces. At 35-years old, I stand now in my boots ready for community, big and small, to be with others, others I know and others I don't know. For I have learned to trust my neighbor, my stranger, my other. 

Stay here with her. I tell him. I'll be fine. 

I am holding my keys when I kiss him. I turn on the outside lamp, lock the door and step out into the cold night air. 

With every uterine pinch, I shiver and sob. It is leaving me, the contents of my brief pregnancy. Here in the privacy of my moving car, I will weep it out, pour myself dry. These thoughts will call forth my fears until I am quiet inside... I never heard a heartbeat. Why did I tell so many people when I hadn't even heard a heartbeat? Why did we tell our little one (our little one who loves littler ones)? Why were we so naive? so bold? so stupid? What will I tell her? How much of the truth? Something went wrong. I'll say, along with, I'm sorry. And what about me? What will I see when it comes out? Will it be limp? translucent? still wet with the warm spit of my womb? Nothing frightens me more than loss.

Waiting for my midwife, I lie on crinkly paper in a triage room. It is nearly midnight now. I was once in the room next to this one, trembling with contractions, my first baby banging on the gates of me, screaming for freedom, for breath and breast.  

I am no longer 12 weeks pregnant. I know that now. My due date was mid-July. Now it is midnight of December 28, 2018. What will they do with it once it is out of me? Once it is birthed, removed, expelled? What will they do with it? Will I see its bones, veins, and soft skull?  What will they do with it? What will they do with me?

Perhaps I should have known. A few weeks ago, nausea and exhaustion lifted. What relief I felt. Not dread. Not fear. Relief. I could function again without dozing off or looking for bread. I didn't gain any weight though. In fact, I seemed to be losing weight.  Then last week, a midwife searched for a heartbeat, pressing deep into my doughy belly with her electric wand. She couldn't find one. Still, I had no dread, no fear. 

It's still early. She said. 

I believed her. 

Tonight, at two minutes before midnight, I stand and feel my body empty. 

12:37 a.m... Still no midwife. 

My sister's maternity clothes hang in my closet at home. I feel foolish for wearing that denim dress on Christmas, the one with the buttons and the high elastic waist. 

1:15 a.m... I lie on my back, my legs wide and bent like a spider's, while my nurse and midwife remove "the tissue."  I hate this word.

It probably stopped growing a few weeks ago. They tell me. 

Now it is "tissue." Nothing more than the contents of a small jar. It isn't even a fetus. It is the saddest bit of gore I have ever seen. Gray bits and bluish blood, perhaps a placenta gone rogue, I learn later. The nurse is kind. She tells me that I still have ten more childbearing years. I don't believe her, but I appreciate her. She asks if I'd like it blessed. 

I don't understand at first, but then I do. Sure, I guess. Thank you.

Under a 3am sky, I watch the highway sweep beneath me, while my body seeps silently, still emptying.

At home, I stand in the hot shower until my skin is pink. I dry off and cover my bleeding parts in cotton and plastic, then dress in my robe. I should go to bed, but I stop at the fridge instead. With bare feet on the cold kitchen floor, I eat leftover pumpkin pie like a hungry dog. Once I am full and bare, I pull myself up the stairs to dress in the dark.

I'm not pregnant anymore. I tell him. 

He has been at the edge of sleep for hours. I crawl in beside him. Damp and warm, I lie on my soft belly while he gathers my heavy bones into his heavy bones and we sleep like new parents, restless and bewildered.