Miranda Levi

I piss into a plastic cup
and lower the little white stick
into everything I am still stupid enough to hope for.
Three minutes.
I have learned how long three minutes can be.
Long enough to picture his hands
holding the back of a newborn’s head.
Long enough to imagine a face
with his eyes
and my stubborn mouth.
Long enough to build a bedroom,
choose a name,
hear a laugh from the end of a hallway
we do not have.
Then the window clears.
One line.
A single pink incision.
The test doesn’t say no.
It doesn’t have to.
My body has learned the language
of empty space.
No again.
No again.
No again.
Each time, something small inside me
packs its bags without saying goodbye.
Not enough to kill me, that would be too kind.
Just enough to make the next morning heavier.
My body burns through its own weather.
Heat gathers beneath my skin
with nowhere to go.
My face flushes.
My clothes cling.
My pulse beats against the cage of me
trying to escape the same body
I can’t escape.
I stand beneath cold water
until my teeth ache.
Still burning.
Still empty.
Doctors told me years ago
that this would be difficult.
They softened their voices
as though speaking gently
could make a sentence less permanent.
They said unlikely.
They said complicated.
They said miracle
with the careful distance of people
who would go home to someone else’s children.
So I buried the wanting early.
I pushed it down deep,
beneath work and rent
and grocery receipts,
beneath every bill stamped
PAST DUE,
beneath the price of being alive
rising faster than we can earn it.
I told myself I did not need a family.
I said it so often
it almost became true.
Then I met him.
Now I watch him crouch on the floor
with our niblings,
letting them climb his back,
letting their small hands pull at his face.
I watch him with our godson,
patient and ridiculous,
his whole body turned toward that child
as if listening is a form of shelter.
And I see the father he could be.
Better than the one he never had.
Better than the one I did.
I see him breaking an inheritance
that was never money.
I see him teaching a child
that love does not vanish
when the room becomes difficult.
And something inside me tears open
so quietly
no one notices.
No man has ever hurt me
the way this absence does.
There is no one to blame.
No door to slam.
No cruel message to reread
until I finally hate him enough to heal.
Only my own body,
keeping its secrets.
Only time,
moving forward without us.
People speak of options
as though options do not have price tags.
As though science is not locked
behind a number we will never have.
As though hope does not require
a deposit,
good credit,
paid leave,
a home with another room.
We are already spending everything
just to remain where we are.
The rent rises.
The food shrinks.
The wages stay still.
We hold each other
while the world reaches into our pockets
and takes the future first.
I keep trying to accept it.
I tell myself there are other ways to love.
I count the lives already touching mine.
I practice gratitude
until the word goes numb in my mouth.
Then my period is late.
Or I feel sick.
Or my breasts ache.
Or I wake from a dream
with my hand resting over my stomach.
And there I am again,
barefoot on the bathroom tile,
holding a white stick
like a tiny plastic oracle.
Three minutes.
A whole life grows inside them.
Then the window clears.
One line.
It’s no again.
And the spiral opens beneath me,
patient as a mouth.
I fall farther each time.
Not because I believed it would say yes.
Because some small, feral part of me
still does.