Birthing

I gave birth in space. The air conditioner breathed below 20 degrees on a humid day of June. I walked to the operating table, drowsy in afternoon half sleep, the hospital gown slung on my shoulders loose. They poked anasthesia into my backbone, it was the best high I ever had. They taped my eyes as the doctor giggled with the nurses and they chatted about matters from a parallel universe. I heard everything but was numb belly down. She cut me open, it felt like a mere scratch. Slung my son upside down, and said it's a boy! My son was whiter than white and waling aloud. They took him away and stitched me up. I saw blood soaked green sheets, all that blood mine. They brushed off the blood and had me clean in forty five minutes or so. My son's cries grew fainter until I could hear no more. I cried. I laughed. Unbelievable, this stuff. Fucking breathtaking. I was floating over myself, oozing with emotions I cannot name, and high. They sent me to my room and I shivered for three hours. Nurses, six of them, tossed me from the stretcher to the bed. I saw my thighs being moved, I couldn't feel a thing. It was like I was outside this body. Just a floating mind. A cluster of memories, a bunch of neurons. Between my legs was numb for days and everything hurt. There was no hunger, no thirst. And glimpses of depression, in postpartum. Me being me, how can that not be?

But I reminded myself of that birthing in space and how my locus of control moved out of me that day, to float above me and then swiftly into my son.