First page

conception

i had just checked.

i frowned and re-read the numbers scribbled in a corner of the page.
there’s two lines. i read and read again the first.
i have a vague feeling i’m missing something.
so i read. again. the first line only. 

i snap the booklet shut and lift my gaze back to you, poised like a panther on the bed. rock hard.

“i’m not fertile right now”.

we’ve been raw with longing and chaste for three days, in the same room, in the same bed. waiting. i take you inside me at last, with deep relief like when my body sinks into water and all is new again.

i want you to fill me to the brim. i want to be crushed into petals by our bodies straining to get ever closer deeper.

and then i feel it happen. 

*

i’m lying on my back and my body is glowing with pleasure. fresh air pools into my lungs as the electric charge of semen pulses through my body, warming every nerve ending.

then i feel a gentle finger of lightning touch my womb. and instantly, i know. everything becomes very sharp as the great veils of matter part before me. space and time stop their snake dance, for a heartbeat, and turn to me to give me a brilliant, knowing smile. every star, every spirit and dust mote and blade of grass, every living being in creation looks right at me as I stare in open-mouthed awe, beyond surprise, plugged into a wavelength where i hear their one voice celebrating in rapture -Yes! Life!

Beautiful new life!

With the next heartbeat it is gone. 

A friend told me she felt it, the second she conceived. She did not mention this.

For a second I received the honouring of all of the worlds. Life joyfully bowed to itself in its greatest Work and I was all of it.

My next thought is - Fuck. Don’t tell me this just happened. With the next breath I have swept all of it under a thick carpet of denial and wiped my memory clean. It can’t have happened - and then, it didn’t happen. 

A few days later, close friends watch me at the brink of exhaustion, and their eyes shine softly.
“You are so beautiful today Joy. You are utterly radiant.” Something in my gut quivers.

The memory suddenly returns the day I should start bleeding. I pounce on the booklet and read both lines and count again and again, growing cold with dread. I still cannot quite allow the memory to resurface. I wait the whole day, with baited breath, for blood to laughingly prove me wrong. 

No blood comes.