What Holds

1. Word Problem

Partly it’s a linguistic problem.
I don’t like the nominalization, the noun made of a verb.
Even the word itself holds within it another noun, the way I did.
And then there’s the carriage.
A reminder of an empty one.

So let’s try an active approach.
The verb “miscarry.” I carried
incorrectly like a child bearing a watermelon to a picnic,
unsteadily and any second likely to
drop.
But then I’m seeing small hands bare feet
round bellies red pulp.

Do the words “I lost the baby”
even constitute a euphemism?
Losing can mean unable to find.
This is not phone, wallet, or car keys.

A future person, a life, a son I was already picturing.
I return to the fetal position, wet and outraged.

More than words fail.

2. The Stork

At the welcome desk of labor
and delivery, I gamely make
shapes next to name. age.
emergency contact. A stork,
cheerful despite its
heavy bundle, flies across
the intake form. A burdened
bow stuffed into its beak,
yet it ascends.

In a small room at the end
of the hall, I change into a patient
and wait for the removal
of death. Past the privacy curtain,
a woman, buoyant despite her
load, glides down the linoleum
praying for the moment when her
cries are outhowled by the next
generation.

The stork finds me. Circling
above the bed, its empty beak
gapes hungrily before it pulls
off the sheets and snatches
my unsavable baby. A thieving
pterodactyl, it flees the hospital. I’m
alone.

The nurse wakes me, so gently,
in an empty nest. No feathers, no eggs,
no birdsong. Just my quiet cry issuing
out into the world.

3. Is A Charm

The first time
They couldn’t find a heartbeat
When I didn’t start to bleed
They told me “your body is
Holding on to the pregnancy”
Which could be said for my mind

The second time
I couldn’t stop bleeding
I lost consciousness in the car
And dreamed—not of my life
Or the one draining from me but—
Of the future I could not share with
My living daughters if I did not come back

The third time
I bled enough to scare myself
Into promising the universe
I would be good
I would not complain
I would never ask
For anything again

Keeping my word
I hold my wish in my arms.

Christine Himmelfarb’s passion for narrative carried her from journalism to graduate school to teaching. Her story started in Texas, featured stopovers in London, San Francisco, and New York City, and currently takes place in Chicago, where as a mother of three small people, she reads stacks of books and manages small dramatic productions at playgrounds. She teaches English at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and holds an MA in literature from the University of Chicago.