Baby Flesh
When you see your ex with a baby strapped onto him for the first time, don’t act surprised. Even though you haven’t seen him in years, obviously, and you’ve just bumped into him outside the cafe where you both used to sit with your laptops, attempting to study, but too distracted by each other, legs rubbing against legs, hands reaching across the table, fingers slipping along fingers. Don’t think about the days when you skipped study entirely just to stay in bed all day. Smile and say congratulations. Let the word slip out of your mouth like it’s nothing. Smile without awkwardness, like you already imagined this day in your head a hundred times and knew you’d feel nothing. Not a steadily growing pain deep in your womb, not like someone was snipping away at your ovaries with a pair of scissors and holding your windpipe in a tight grip at once. Not a pang, not a twitch, not even a pinch, nothing.
And while you’re standing there acting normal, faced with your ex and his newborn, whatever you do, don’t look at it. Don’t twist your head around, don’t lean towards his chest, smell his familiar scent mixed with a sweet tang of baby flesh and take a peek at the sleeping infant leaning its soft, fat cheek on his t-shirt. Don’t watch the baby’s closed eyelids flutter ever so slightly with dreams, its perfect little pouting lips moving gently as if sucking on its mother’s breast. Don’t suddenly think about the mother and ask where she is just as she steps out of the cafe with two take-out coffees in hand and passes one to your ex calling him honey and looks at you with her stunning lake-blue eyes like she doesn’t know who you are, because she doesn’t, you’ve never met. Don’t stay and answer questions like how do you two know each other? Don’t spurt out we used to go out at the same time as your ex says we studied together. Don’t make it awkward, don’t just stand there, don’t expect him to feel anything, don’t be hurt by his answer, don’t expect the mother of his baby to react in any way, she owns him now, nothing about you could make her feel insecure.
Don’t wait for the baby to wake and make the softest, saddest sound you’ve ever heard and watch your ex start to jiggle his torso up and down like he’s done it a million times and knows exactly what to do. Let them carry on their family day and carry on with yours just like you were, because nothing has changed and nothing has moved within you. Don’t turn your head to look back towards them only to see him intertwine his fingers with hers, and walk away without turning. Don’t let your thoughts take you where you don’t want to go. Don’t dive deep into the past tense. Let yourself get away with wishing she has prolapse.
Petra Nyman is a Finnish-born writer who lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Letters at Victoria University in 2020. Her work has been published in Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, The Dominion Post and produced as a radio play by RNZ.