from reds to greyscale

I'd left the house with the kitchen and laundry room in disarray, telling myself I would continue after my afternoon appointment. What made me think I would be in the right state to return home with cleaning on my mind? Who was I to think so positively, someone with so much bad luck her whole life?

November didn't go down without a fight, from screaming familiar lyrics in the car to holding back tears about to blur a sonogram. November went from the ups and downs of shades of red to shaky greyscale screens. And now while I was supposed to start December with ocean hues and my husband's favourite colour, I am starting it with disbelief and grief in baby blues.

I believe the blue is my karma. I grasped onto too much hope that the reds will mix with the white of this new slate to form ribbons and braids. How could I have forgotten everything I've done before this better half of the year? Who was I to think the colours of my twenty wouldn't haunt me again?

My friends say it can't be karma when this one is already the product of two better people: a man who has never laid a finger on her and a woman who doesn't live with the ones who did anymore. Time is supposed to be the medicine but I don't understand it now when I had to feel everything at once in the moment I saw a protrude between its legs.

And here I am now trapped in this nightmare, baby clothes and room walls don't matter anymore yet still hurt me to the very core. I have to hear the desperate pleas to be grateful, he still has a beating heart and he has his ten fingers. He has his feet which I've looked at with so much love but whose pictures I can't bear to look at anymore.

Nobody has died and here I am grieving, ungrateful. December is off to a grey and blurry start and I don't understand anymore the ways of the clock. I was prepared to feel pain again but that was supposed to be in the far future, when you grow up to skip school behind my back or ignore my calls or get into arguments with your father.

I was not prepared to have my heart sink shortly after seeing yours beating so strongly. I was not prepared to cry curled up in bed again for a long time, tears too fast for me to bother covering my face. I was not prepared for this excitement to die out short of meeting you. I'm supposed to love you, and here I am once again a terrible mother. How would you feel eighteen years down the road if you were told how much your mother cried to know what you were?