Workshop 2017: Everything has a price

Earlier today, I got a message about my breastpump - hospital grade, used for 9 months.

I had posted ages ago with no takers. Thursday night, still shaky from a night of trying blot out so much hurt the day before, I unpacked the breastpump, looked it over, prepared to try again.I woke in the early hours on Friday. My heart ached.  I struggled to choke back a sob.

I watched your sister breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

I watched your brother breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

I listened to your father snore and breathe, in and out. 

I touch my forehead to the mirror. I resist the urge to bash my head against it until there is only broken glass and blood left.

Some days, I all I see wheb my eyes are closed is blood: my blood, dripping down my legs after that failed poolside leap. My mother's blood, gathering beneath her whilst she miscarries.  I see blood moving into her, transfusion after transfusion.  I see my father's necrotizing flesh and blood from that spider bite that sends me quaking in fear of the Brown Recluse.  I see blood and water in pools in a delivery room floor.

I move through the house sometimes without really being here.  I move through this life sometimes, without really being here. I try not to think about other paths, different journeys. Sometimes the cracks appear and I am able only to think the other paths, the other possibilities. 

 I count up months and realise I have spent more of this past decade lacatong or pregnant than I would have dreamed possible.

 I count up months and realise the price of being the savior or heroine.This morning, I got a message. 'Is this still available? My baby....we've just spent a the month in Adenbrook. I have to express because he is feeding through a tube.'

She turns up a few hours later; I see her from the kitchen window and I know, instinctively, it is her.  I am startled at how similar she looks to my 33-year old self. 

The ground shifts for a moment beneath my feet. I feel sick. She hands me money. 'Tescos didn't have any five pound notes.'  

I hand her the box. I can't let go. I have to let go. I shove the money into the pockets of my shorts. It is summer now. Finally.

The light is almost blinding.Later, the money will have disappeared into the wind. Everything knows its own price, even a mother's milk.