Emergency C-Section with Partial Hindsight Ashley Kunsa
Listen: the body will only carry you so far. Light is one thing, goodness quite another. And pain makes interventions on its own behalf. Once, this city was a stranger to me. I don’t mean miraculous, or even promising—I mean I was sixteen months in this place before I recognized the call of a chuch bell ten blocks away. How long does it take to arrive? Last night I pressed your hand to my throat. What I wanted to feel was more alive than I had in the moment they sliced through seven layers of flesh to fish out a human who didn’t want this world. Who could blame him? You both carried fear in your eyes. An hour before, in the arms of the anesthesiologist, I wept for the life I was desperate not to lose. His or mine? Impossible to say from this distance. Listen: you are no more to blame than the sheen scumming the pond, and gravity is the only thing that promises your starstruck feet to the ground. That humming inside, it could come from anywhere. Don’t discount sources unknown.
37 | Issue 41