by Katie Robinson

CW: Miscarriage, blood, and mourning.

Between my fingers, I rolled a small, fleshy ball like you would a pen while speculating.

Brick-red, it had layers. Should I bury it? I believe the technical term is blastocyst. At four and a half weeks, I had lost it.

Johanna. The name we’d never use and the premature premonition of her face that I dared to conjure before the guarantee of viability.

Days earlier, I smiled with a secret. Now, I bleed for weeks. A woman is no stranger to blood, but this is different as my body empties itself of that which was intended to grow new bones and flesh. I had failed; my womb becomes a void lined with broken glass.

My husband wraps me with linens in our bed, embracing through the trickling nights, a quiet funeral and purging of my naïve visions which are now all that remain.

When my grandmother heard, she said with good intentions, “‘They’ say that happens if something is wrong with it. You wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.”

But, damn it, I did—I wanted her.

Katie Robinson is an emerging writer of fiction and poetry. An English professor and M.F.A. student, she resides in coastal Virginia with her husband, two sons, and a flock of unruly hens. She is on Twitter/X @ktRobinson511.