The rain is falling

Bent over double in pain I gasp for air
I grab at my groin as I groan, it’s raining. I’m alone.
Like the crush of soft fruit, like the pear I ate for breakfast, I feel my juices squeezed out and as tears fall from my eyes I can’t help but cry out.
The rain is falling. I shiver. My head spins.
I’m wet. I’m dripping from my eyelashes and my clothes and …from elsewhere. Droplets turn to knife-like daggers surging forth from deep down within me and the cramps shoot down my leg, through my knee to the soul of my being. The souls of my feet splash as I struggle to keep going and I imagine throwing up on the side of the street and what kind of hostile reactions that would get if I was to meet someone I knew. The questions I’d get asked.
I hurry past the soaking strangers and finally, desperate and delirious, I return home.
I grab my phone and dial for my beloved. My other half, the one who chose me above every other beautiful bountiful woman on offer and I laugh as I’m greeted with his voicemail.
I curl up under my blanket in bed as the heavy hale beats down on my roof and I wonder who I can talk to. The truth is so private, so raw it cuts so deep into my core, to share it is to expose something hidden from within.

Very hidden. Like a secret sin I’m scared to share incase it’s mysterious power somehow over takes me. Incase I succumb to some superstitious self fulfilling prophecy.

You see – that harsh grabbing, the groping at my innards and the hot, red beads flowing forth from below… that’s a Cluster of life attempting to grow into a holy manifestation of the divine. A rather fine group of cells longing to shine out into the world but being held back, drowned by the chaos of something unknown.

They said the result was positive. Somehow it worked.
But they said my body is failing to support it. So, now, like a sick joke I wait here in limbo awaiting to find out if this blood trickling out of me is the remains of what could have been my first baby. And all the whilst they tell me there’s a chance it might last, that chance is small and as I crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my pounding head I remember the day they told me my body was broken.

21 years old and frightened and angry I heard the results of those tests nearly a decade ago, sat frozen in the doctor’s office trying to make sense of the situation I knew was probably my own doing. And then all those scans, waiting for the follicles to grow and the blood tests before that and the pills and the needles and like a cat negotiating its way across slippery branches high up I slip.

The pain continues to shoot down from my hip and the rain beats down ever heavy like the flow from down there, as it spills forth from that place I so often forget.

And all that I’ve done wrong floods my
Mind like the bursting banks of the growing dirty river flowing down my noisy street. To believe these cruel voices would mean defeat and then that tiny glimpse of hope that maybe this isn’t the end, would fade away like a distant song.

I try to remember the excitement and delight. That little seed within me feels like it’s fading but perhaps it’s actually quite bright. I don’t know. All I know is the fear and the blood and the pain and that incessant noisy rain.

He returns. The other owner of all this, the one who gets the bliss of not having to carry it and feel it but who is as much a part of holding it and healing it as I am. His eyes shine, wet like the street outside and he struggles to hide the subtle sadness of his own journey through this. And he yearns to lean over and to kiss my head and to lay his warm hands on my confused body. Instead, his shimmering eyes meet mine and that shine glistens brighter and he tells me he loves me, I’m a fighter, that it will be ok.

It will be ok. Whatever happens it, that holy grail that we search for, will come to us one day and perhaps this just isn’t the time. Or perhaps it is. Because I keep forgetting that I might actually be fine and this mindfuck of a reaction could be a strange heavenly contraction that’s signifying something but not actually the end. A godsend of sorts sent to scare us and to knock some stronger prayers out of our humbled hearts. A possible start even. Who knows?

Until the time that it is made clear I have to just stay here as best as I can. With no plan just my man at my side and the strength to hide my sorrow from the world and the gratitude to keep going in spite of it all. If I remember that cats rarely fall, then I’ll keep leaping across the wet wilderness like the warrior tigress that i am. No blood is going to trip me up and no pain can shame me into sorrowful submission.

My mission to be a mother outbids any other process trying to take over. And, as the cramps subside and the blood flow gets lighter I sit surrounded by stories of memories and hopes and dreams. And i even think that the rain might have stopped, or at least so it seems.