My blood was jumping and boiling hot and electric and ready and waiting and impatient but I ignored that shit cuz she was trying to spit something out to me. He—he—he— Like the chirp of a bird with something lodged in its throat, struggling to breathe through it, biting off something that would’ve been too large to chew if the bird had had teeth in the first place.

I stood there, waiting for her to spit it out. Letting my blood boil uselessly against the patience of it. It’s hard to spit something like this, something you hold too close to your breast even if it is poison. Something that could hurt you all the way out your body even as you speak it. I knew that feeling way too well and I knew you couldn’t rush a thing like that. You’d either swallow it back, or mince the words into something that can’t communicate so you’re left even more lonely in the turmoil than when you started. I waited and gave her the time to form the chain so we could go ahead and break it together.

Except.

I dunno maybe she ended up mincing her words anyway, fucking it up or something, because what she said next wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Even the ideas behind it (her, a baby, having a baby) was enough to get my head swimming but that wasn’t even the smoking gun. “He killed your baby?” I sputtered incredulously, blurting it past all sense of subtly because I’m shit with the concept. “He killed your baby??” I said again, and yeah, maybe I was being insensitive saying it over and over again like that but I was still trying to wrap my head around it.

She had a baby and someone had killed it. My blood—which was already smoldering in my veins—starting bubbling and crackling and my breathing got heavy as I let the thought rile me up and my muscles were begging for a fight again. But I was still lost—like—all of these sensations came over me too fast to handle and I was dumbstruck staring at her, staring at the surgical words she had used to describe the death of her child. Something was off. I cocked my head, my brow furrowed as I looked at her, because I was still grasping for something but I didn’t even know what I was reaching for.

It’s not that I think she had lied. It was nothing like that. It’s just, after her revelation, I felt like I was blind in one eye and there was a whole other piece of the plane I was missing. What happened?, my blood whispered.







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