His life is our vagina this is what came to me as I woke up backwards in bed because of the heat facing the fan in front of the open window his life is our vagina. I was staying with a couple I know near the metro station in a neighbourhood similar to my own but different more urban more big city like a city I am visiting but I think I lived there too. I was sleeping on their couch. They are putting me up for the time being due my being ejected from my own couple. I am in the living room of their apartment as everyone prepares to leave for the day. She is in the hallway beside a bookcase asking her partner in the kitchen “What was that joke that Dan told, about the briefcase?” She is holding a briefcase herself in one hand it hangs by her hip her partner is not listening to her she laughs to herself “It was really funny” and I sense a connection between her and me growing as the connection between her and her partner (I do not know him so well) diminishes. We are connecting somehow this very moment and as we walk together down the street and I say good bye to them as they go off on their respective days and thank them once more for letting me stay at their place I know I will be seeing her alone soon and also that I must rush back to their apartment and write down all of this as a short story.
“Good bye then,” I am getting up from the sidewalk table after having a coffee and notice the young woman who had been sitting at the table beside me, a large circular green table. I turn as she is still sitting there looking at me and I go back and ask, “Do I know you?” And she says I do not, but remains friendly. Then as I am crossing the street I see Allison, from work, with a baby in a carrier on her chest. I say hi and look at the baby surprised. “Is that your baby?” I ask her, and she says yes. She has had him for over a year, adopted. She looks tired and rushed but happy as she says, or someone informs me, she is one month pregnant now. I say good bye as she rushes along with her baby.
His life is our vagina I am tangled in the bed sheet backwards in bed on the sweaty pillow. It is a difficult birth. Our son is entangled in the umbilical cord. The cord that I nervously cut in the hospital. The cord she keeps sewing back together. His life is our vagina.
George Slobodzian's work has appeared in literary magazines across Canada. Clinical Studies, a book of poetry, was published by DC Books, and a book of his poems was translated into German and published by Mattes Verlag of Heidelberg.