Anonymous, Untitled, IVF placenta print with acrylic paint, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
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“Just swallow quick and you won’t feel it squirm,” Abby says.
I wipe my palms on my jeans. No way. There is no way. Abby holds the spider by one leg and, I swear, its hairs sway with the breeze and I think about the feel of that spider in my throat.
Think about how it will stick, those spindly legs working their way back onto my tongue and then I think about the taste.
“You won’t have to bite it or anything,” Abby says.
My stomach pushes towards my tonsils. My breakfast tries to surface. I swallow it back, though I want to let it fly, dream of spewing Cheerios in Abby’s face. I smile. Accidentally. The idea of splitting that spider with my teeth, knowing it will squirt, erases that smile. I also know if I puke on Abby, I’m a goner…
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It took me a week and a lifetime and an infinity to pick up the phone.
I told my therapist about the offer to join their family.
That they’d be willing to move to make it work.
“I think if they’re considering moving to include you,” he said, “you’re already part of the family.”
The message was clear.
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What does a flower feel when it blossoms? Soft? Beautiful?
After being a seed, then a sprout, how does it feel to unfurl?
Nothing like the process that it took to get there.
— Your mother, on the phone last week
In this year of facing your mortality, the same lesson etches itself deeper and deeper, again and again into your soul, everytime as if it was the first time. Death is real. That’s the lesson. Every time it scares you…
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I was not here when Notre-Dame burned. I had already moved to Montreal. In the last snows of winter, I watched the flames lick her spire from a laptop as my own body was consumed by fires I hadn’t yet detected. I see a yellow crane hovering above the spot where I know the cathedral to be, where hundreds of experts are laying hands on her once-burned body. I am beyond the reach of restorers. Plumes of smoke still billow above my head…
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