My best friend was my embedded mattress that knew the shape of my belly, the belly of a whale, that blew and bowled at the bottom of the deep blue sea- I was seven months pregnant and morning sickness greeted me like an old lover. Nausea and disgust tasted like boxed spaghetti meant to linger in the light of the refrigerator door but had been eaten out of hunger and hatred for my midnight self, and now was cool against my rosacea cheek, settled in the bowl of my shit-stained toilet. It had taken only one, two heaves this morning to stand on my feet, soles pressed against the tile floor, to take two steps to the kitchen and cook myself a breakfast egg. Today was better than most.
I lit my cigarette with one hand, cracked an egg with the other, turned on the gas stove click, click, click, and contemplated calling Henry again- surely he would answer this time. I smoked so I would stay thin even after my baby would bloom, though my knees were swollen, fingers swollen, toes turned into balls of meat sold at the super market across town.
The last time I saw my sweet Henry, my phallic lover, was four nights after I discovered that I would be delivering his very own child. He was still, silent, though I am mostly sure that I saw his shoulders slump (from a hard day at work, yes a very hard day). He said nothing except for a faint twinge in his knitted eyebrows, something only I would see. You see, Henry was a hard man, terse with words but very tender to me when he held me at night. He left early on a languorous Monday morning, leaving me nothing except his unborn baby attached to my belly. But for a reason unknown, I knew he would return.
I say that this morning was better than most because it is more often than not that I awake calling his name, “Henry! Henry! Our child is almost here!” And before I can fully open my smudge eyes, he comes to me like a dream- foggy and sparkling. It is then that I become sick from nausea and disgust and styrofoam leftovers from the night before.
When I think of Henry, I think of my slender legs (they hadn’t been as disgustingly swollen at the time), wrapped around my beloved boy while he read, as I spoke of future plans to ice skate when snow fell and collect cherry-stained popsicle sticks by the spring. The memories of him come to me in splints of silver in my eyesight, scintillating in the shines of my white.
My egg was sizzling, sunny side up so that it created a perfect sphere that reminded me of the plump face of a smiling child. It popped as I went to flip it on the buttered pan and spilled a yellow thickness that seemed to drool at the edges until hardened by the heat of the gasoline stove.
I missed Henry more than ever, more than ever, and began to cry not a pregnant pity but an indiscernible ache that accompanied me most mornings when I was not kept busy or calling his phone. I have these moments that come to me in a smog to reveal the most vivid and untouched thoughts, but disappear like morning dew before I can hear the sound of a single consonant being said.
The yellow of my breakfast egg began to burn and a smoke-filled smell turned my insides to tar to silence the thoughts of my beloved, my lovely, my aching Henry once more. And though I was unsure of whether I was hungry, deliberately starving, sick, lonely, or irrevocably in love, he, I knew, would return.
