print previewback AMY O’REILLY
Postmortem, Postpartum
Postmortem, says my husband when we bring the baby
home. He gets things wrong sometimes.
He has his beliefs: nonmicrowavable dishes
are microwaveable under 30 seconds;
ChapStick’s a ploy to weaken the lips,
creating the need for more ChapStick.
First the baby was breached, then beached,
which wasn’t that far off—a boy-whale
wedged on the distant shore of that other
world within me.When they cut
him out, and I felt nothing, and I saw nothing,
my sense of smell ramped up
the way a blind musician unpacks many layers
within a single note. I smelled the laundered
bedding and the anesthesiologist’s
citrusy breath. There was the previous night’s labor
sweat, but mostly cauterized flesh—
like damp hair singed in a curling iron,
only worse.Days later, when my husband
splashes bacon grease on the burner, and
smoke scales the pan, and laces the hall, I swear it’s
me, smoldering still, from the inside out,
like the charred cage of a house
burned down overnight. Its fat armchairs
and stocked pantry and the bad wires no one suspected: all
cinders collapsing under their own weight,
releasing sudden puffs well into the next day.
I shouldn’t get up, my husband says. So
he pats down the bacon and delivers it couchside,
directly on the stainless steel TV tray.
Some things he gets exactly right. 
Postmortem, Postpartum
What Our Son’s Birth
Has Taught Us