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Home > BOOTH > Vol. 7 (2015) > Iss. 3

 

Article Title

What No One Mentions

Abstract

Is how the birth comes together and in waves and you come to know one another in those hours like you’ll know one another ever after: which of you is afraid of pain, which of you is angry, which of you is stubborn, which of you is cautious and swaddled in memory. I knew Phoebe’s reluctance even while she was being born, and in it, I understood her intelligence. I knew then her life would be a burden to her, that she’d blame me for it, but also that she’d never let up, that she’d hold each one of her days fiercely in her teeth. Her birth took fifteen hours, and it was like we were working against each other, like she was raging for the remainder of darkness that she knew then as light. Womb-light, deeper than a bruise. She fought, and she knows in her muscles how I wanted her born, how I worked and wailed just to get her here.

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What No One Mentions was originally published at Booth.

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