On the ride to the clinic, you were silent. We had to travel to another state to do this thing. 

The night before, you sat in the corner, self-medicating. Smoke spun from your mouth, a diaphanous flow. Some people might worry that this would hurt the baby. I spent the night, dreamless, ready to wake up at any moment, until the moment when I had to wake up.

In the examining room, they gave me a robe. It was too small for me, and I strained to make it close properly. At least it’s not paper, I thought, because that would tear, and then I’d be exposed. 

You couldn’t look at me on the way home.

When we got gas, I had to get out of the car to breathe. The vapors from the tank made me a little high, and I forgot about it for a moment.

A rough patch, I told myself as we crossed the state line, the car pointed toward the horizon.

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Amy Kiger-Williams holds an MFA in Fiction from Rutgers-Newark. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Yale Review Online, Cleaver, (mac)ro(mic), Gone Lawn, and Ghost Parachute, among others. She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. You can read more of her work at amykigerwilliams.com and follow her on Twitter at @amykw.

Art:
Morning Frost by Bri Gawkoski