“Postpartum”
by Blair Hurley
“We didn’t hear much about the virus for the two days I spent in the hospital, fragile and bleeding, my husband curled on the couch, her in a plexiglass bassinet beside us, fascinating and beautiful.
The outside world was the view outside my window and nothing more — parking lot, roll of muddy hills, watery spring sunrise. The world could wait. We returned home and consumed ourselves with learning how to feed her, diaper her, soothe her, overwhelmed and exhausted. My sister came to help and slipped into the country days before the borders closed. My mother had died five years ago. I knew I’d feel her absence when I was holding my daughter in my arms, but now her lack was sharp and frightening. No one in our locked-down household knew what we were doing. We didn’t know what it meant when she sighed or moaned or cried, we didn’t know how to hold her or feed her. I remembered the breathless, awestruck feeling I had when I first took the test and saw the faint blue line and felt suddenly responsible for a life. She needed me, and the world was falling apart.”