The Room & the Womb
She hears them out there. They have the sound of her mother’s sighs, her children’s cries, the hollow echo of all the lies she tells herself; sometimes the simpering of dreams curing in the dark. Mostly, they sound like the slow gnawing of guilt—guilt for all the times she wanted to write, craved it, but the baby was ruddy with teething, the cat had eaten a bait, the dishes formed impossible puzzles in the sink, and her fingers hovered and stilled on the keypad, and her eyelids fluttered, and sleep claimed her.