Daphne

"It'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in."
-Kim Addonizio

She sat at a bus stop. Knees together, feet turned inward, dark hair dripping with the Baltimore rain. Her green dress clung to her skin like black moss on slender tree limbs. It was probably ruined. Several taxis stopped, their sticky black interiors beckoning. Tired of waiting, they each drove off in search of a better fare. She glanced up as each car baptized her with dirty street water. Waiting for the gray Chrysler she knew would eventually come. She clutched the hem of her dress twisting the edges into knots above her knees. She shouldn’t have left the house, she shouldn’t have worn that dress, and she certainly should have known never to go anywhere uninvited. Even if it is just a stupid party. Even if it is New Years Eve. The dress clung and strangled and sunk into her skin. Anyone who passed would not see a girl, wet and shivering, but a tree. Willowy and fragile and bent with the cold and the rain, covered in black moss.

paris in the rain

she has
fingers like piano keys
they grasp the black handle of an umbrella
with white bone china
pink and gold rimmed.
her bare feet
trace circles in the ground

Feeling Everything

This time I warned the doctor.

“Don’t, under any circumstances, ask my husband to cut the umbilical cord.”

When he was in High School he’d passed out watching a conjoined twin separation on TV. I didn’t really feel like sharing my shiny medical spotlight with anyone else.

I was prepared. I took yoga. I read about relaxation techniques. I was not going to get a sissy epidural. Epidurals are for wussies and bad mothers.

I wasn’t, however, prepared for 26 hours.

At 11:00 PM, July 7^th my husband Blair and I arrived at the hospital. I’d been having the contractions since about 10:30 that morning. They were starting to get a little more intense. Nothing I couldn’t handle of course. Just bad enough that I wanted to grab on to Blair’s t-shirt and shake him every time one began. They hooked me up to all the fancy monitors. This was it I thought. We sat in that little room, nurses coming in to check on me every once in awhile for the rest of the night. The rest of the night. 8 AM the next morning I was still very pregnant.

My sweet, sweet doctor thought it would be a good idea to get things going a bit. In the agonizingly long night I’d only progressed a few centimeters. “Let’s break your water and see if that makes things move along.”

Things moved along.

Every couple minutes Blair would grab my hand and let me squeeze as hard as I could while he read happy memories out of my journal, just like we’d practiced. I imagined ocean waves and swinging on a swing set at night. Back and forth, and back and forth Just like I’d practiced.

Blair kept bugging me about getting some drugs. I know he hated seeing me this way. The pain in his eyes reflected my own. But I would not give up that easily.

20 hours in, I barfed. It missed the bag Blair held in front of my face. It mostly landed on Blair. That’s what he gets for holding the bag so far away.

“Are you ok? I mean are you sure you don’t want it? I can ask the nurse when she gets back.”

I couldn’t breathe. “Yeah.”

“Did you say yeah?”

“Yeah, ok.” I was a bad mom already.

Blair was on top of things. He flagged down a nurse, and told her about my decision.

The nurse scrambled to make the necessary preparations, and came back in a few minutes later wearing a concerned expression.

“The anesthesiologist is about 45 minutes away, and the doctor doesn’t think you’ll last that long.”

Shit. Now what.

I walked, or rather tried to walk.

I didn’t think it would end, but it did. Blair got a little woozy, but kept his composure long enough to help hold my knees against my shoulders as I pushed.

One scream and it was over.

I felt everything.

Elliot was whole and perfect with sticky dark hair and red skin.