Lori Michelle Hawks

My due date was tomorrow, June 24th, 2014. I love the look of the numbers and their curvy evenness. I love the twos and the fours and how they add up to six. Even the number six reminds me of a pregnant silhouette.

When I miscarried on November 1st, there were too many oddities. All of the numbers were singular and very thin. There were no lumps or lovely bumps in sight.

Tomorrow’s date will come and go. I might shed a tear or even six while I gently hold my flattened belly. I might imagine what it would have been like giving birth to a newborn baby girl who we´d named Icelynn Angelina.

I will definitely sit and wonder whether there is a fertilized egg floating inside of me now. I will definitely stare intently at my temperature chart and slightly frown at the uneven lines and the lack of an ovulation arch that looks like a neatly plucked eyebrow. I will definitely watch my acupuncturist looking disappointed when she sees it, and my heart will ache when she shakes her head as if to say, This, this is why it´s not working; your arch is broken.

The sun will set on tomorrow and the day will pass without the kind of labor I´d hoped for, but some laboring will still be involved. I´ll struggle for energy and swallow down handfuls of sea flavored supplements with a diet of limply cooked vegetables and lean proteins. I´ll labor over the date and all its significance. And then the laboring will pass, and we´ll wake up on June 25th into its odd and quiet singularity yet again.