The Black Room
On Christmas Eve, we take the children to the museum, observing stationary bodies with skin peeled back, muscles and veins on display. We see inside ourselves, and she points to a uterus and says, Kids, look! Your first home, and we joke, Also your first eviction notice. We come to a room draped in black, slightly out of view stating Content Warning: not suitable for everyone. The children and I rush in, my sister follows cautiously. Preserved in glass longer than jars, are fetuses in varying stages of development. Translucent in one, fingers and toes like fins. Larger at twenty-four weeks, still no skin. My sister has suffered a miscarriage, I played God, and we bled together. Her footsteps slow as she approaches the display, quietly, she whispers, They told me it was a baby.
1 reply on “The Black Room”
Very nice. Lets the reader reflect without being didactic. I like the wry humor of “eviction notice”, as well as the sister’s last statement. The reader is left contemplating: the sister’s emotion, her reflection, and our own ideas of what/when “it is a baby”.