Jen Stoll
The Abortion
At night, she sleeps shallowly. She
feels the baby's head resting against her breast. Her arm moves to
stroke the thin blond hair lying flatly against his head, as if rose petals
had been sliced into tiny bits and placed atop the baby's buttery skin.
She dreams she watches her mother dress in
front of a mirror. An aged original of herself, the replica. The
mother sits on the bed as she, herself, looks into the mirror. She
adjusts the auburn hair noticing the mother fall back. She screams
"No" as she moves to gather her mother's body in her arms, her
lap, to rock it to sleep. She strokes the silvery velvet hair. This?
This is not the body. This is the skin alone. The body is next to
her, smiling at her. It is the more familiar mother, not so aged.
Early forties. No wrinkles. Hair is black and silver.
The mother laughs and slices her abdomen and from within emerges
an even younger body of twenty. The mother's belly is big. They
look to each other in the mirror, standing. Her own belly is not
developed as her mother's. She reaches out to touch the child-bearing
womb. The mother laughs and slices it open. As if it were a
peapod, she reaches in to grab her new sibling. It is hollow. She
looks in the mirror to see her own growing belly. It, this time, is flat.
Stroke the babe's hair. Smell the babe's
skin. Feel his belly. This pink and mint green and baby blue
linen is too harsh against her skin. She awakes.
No baby's cry alerts her ears. Her
belly is flat. It is free of marks.
Go to Fiction Writing Workshop
Index
Go to Archives Page