I spoke her name

a hundred times.

[mary oliver]

It's a Monday, and I get the call. You're here, for today. The doctor said you likely wouldn't stay. 

I haven't named you, not in my heart, not in my head. You're feral, elemental. Little more than blood, a pulse right in the meat of me, sinless, saline, unfathomably small. Cousin to what dwelled the earth before trees or rivers existed, when the seas smoked and deep within them something began for the first time to stir. I wouldn't dare name you any more than I would call to any cave-dwelling thing that moved beyond me in the dark.

The first night you were in me, I dreamed about the end of the world. I flew along the coastline in a car, watching fire strike the ocean, the tidal wave rising up, darkening the sky. When the water receded there were strange sea beasts mounded on the sand, beheaded, bleeding.

The night before the second blood test that both confirmed your existence and cursed it, I dreamed of you. I held you in one arm, than the other, fed you from my body. You were so small. A daughter. 

Are you female? We didn't test the embryos, so we don't know. You are only yourself. You'll likely never have to be anything else.

I watched a meteor shower on your second night here. I wanted to inhabit my body too while you were in it, sense my own spin through the universe, notice the ceiling of the world as the Perseids blinked and evaporated. We are on a rock flying and you were in me, safe that day- as the nurse so artfully put it- like a sesame seed flicked into a jar of peanut butter. 

The next blood test comes and goes. You're growing, but too slowly, and you started too late. 

After the blood draw, we go to the grotto in Portland. It's carved into the side of a cliff, the Madonna surrounded by candles. We light a candle for you, watch as the flame gutters and sways. Do you want to wait and watch? he asks. I say no. We walk away slowly, my hand in his. It's your last day.

The final blood draw happens and I check the results from my lab test as soon as they come in. I want to be the first to know, before the doctor, before my husband. You're gone, just like that. It's as though you were never here. 

You were, though. Whatever happens, you'll always be the first- though the first what, I'm not sure. Sesame seed. Star falling. I imagine your flame flickering as the three of us walked away, you, me, and your father. I imagine night falling, the grotto darkening, all the candles bright but one.