Losing Anastasia by Michelle Collotta

I had no idea that I was pregnant until I smelled pennies.
Nickels. Dimes. Quarters. Loose change.
That specific smell that change and blood share.
It smells like mercury and train tracks.
It smells like attention, like roll call.

I was wearing clothes when the water punched through.
It was pink water, warm baby pink.
I was confused by seeing it, having never been pregnant before.
It came down fast and more wet. I cleaned up. Went about my day.
My stomach was in cramps. I’m dying, I imagined. It must be the cigarettes.
Yes, the Liquor and Cigarettes and Cocaine. Opium. Cancer.
It could be any of these things that are giving me these cramps.
Those, relentless in shoot.

At the hospital, they said ‘girl’ before I could warn them not to.
I saw the blip on screen. My girl. Black and White and wholly dead;
Her limbs already passed through me; just a few cells hanging on to my walls.
A few cells that can never say ‘mama’—most of them slid into the toilet,
psychedelic when they hit the water, strange and too diluted for a smile.

I would like to teach you math—
I would like for you to watch me combine oil with garlic and then fresh tomatoes,
like my grandmother and mother did.
But I am selfish and can’t bring the kitchen into the toilet.
Were you to be blonde like your papa as a child?
Would you have liked superman, like him?

Or would you have been like me? Dark and glowing
Sitting on your father’s knee, loving his smile and simultaneously hating his hands?
Would you have loved books? Hated church? Peed in your pants
after I left you at nursery school?
Did you need a mother?
I did not. Did you?