The white porcelain caresses my cheek like the cool side of a pillow on a warm summer’s night. Except, of course, that it is hard, unyielding, and provides none of the comfort.
I keep my body still - I don’t trust it. It’s already betrayed me, and if I twitch I’m sure it will find yet another way to undercut me. But my eyes…they drift from the rim of the toilet and fall slowly to look at the still, pink pond below. It’s impossible not to look. I’d just spent the last few weeks checking the water, checking toilet paper, and hoping for anything that wasn’t red.
Now there is always a shade of red, from pastel pink to burnt umber, and I don’t have to check anymore. I could claim the blissful ignorance of a little girl who doesn’t even know she could bleed.
Except I very much cannot do that. Call it habit or compulsion or morbid curiosity, but today I turned and looked. And ended up here, knees kissing the floor, wishing I’d flushed it all away.
They warn you about the clots. They don’t warn you about the tissue. Is that what this is? My brain stutters and won’t label it “fetus” or “embryo” or worst of all “baby.” It is thin, fleshy, and maybe the size of a quarter. No, a nickel. No, a cherry.
It, too, is hugging the porcelain, nestled against the white curves. Is it just as cold under water as it is up here?
It’s the tail my eyes trace over and over again. Is it a tail? Maybe it’s just a small mass of…something. Maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe this is normal and nothing important at all. But goddamn it, the tail trails off into the depths of the bowl where I can’t see it anymore and I want to move it, poke it, nudge it so I can see the end.
Bile roils in my stomach, but there’s remarkably nothing in my stomach, so what does it matter? My hand moves of its own accord, going to cradle the still-flat span of skin that never had time to bulge.
The movement reminds the rest of my body that it is very much alive - cold tile under knees and soft rug skimming toes. And a single warm trail on my cheek that doesn’t match the cold from the porcelain.
All of me moves at once, and retching echoes around the bowl, escaping loudly past me into the bathroom and ricocheting off the pale green walls.
The gray-brown water doesn’t show my tears or anything else that might have been.
Angie Brady works, loves, and lives in NEPA with her son and husband. She writes primarily short/flash fiction and nonfiction pieces that show a glimpse of our inner dialogues. X: @AngieMBrady