oliviaobryon

Outside it is still windy. I can see the trees dancing in their sway outside the window. The sky is a thin pink strip rising and fading into peach and blue tones. Yet I am here, on this wheeled bed. Inside this hospital room, looking outside this window. My body is tight with pain, and I can see my blood has soaked the bedclothes a deep ruby red. I turn my thoughts to the cement pavement still out there, beneath the early evening sky. J and I had walked upon it hours earlier, in the mid day heat of the August sun. Where my feet and legs had been swollen and thick as they balanced my round belly, heavy with Aya. Along the canal, back and forth, we had walked and waddled. To speed up, to wait out, Aya’s arrival. In a rhythmic contracting pain.

I close my eyes, and…