A Tribute to the Nameless

Sounds, noise from the outside
footsteps, muffled voices,
people talking, her talking.
I listen to the sound
of her voice, like music
putting me to sleep,
providing some comfort,
assuring me that everything
is as it should be.

I try to understand
the words I hear, but I can’t
for I’m much too young
to understand anything.

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The doctor tells her to lie down on the bed and rest her legs up the stirrups. He injects her with anesthesia. He opens up her cervix with the use of a tenaculum and then proceeds to use dilators to make the opening wider. He then introduces his large grasping forcep through the vaginal and cervical canal and continues to make his way inside the uterus.

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Then, there’s silence
they stopped talking.
I wonder what they’re doing.
Then I hear someone sobbing,
she is crying, I feel her sobs.
I try to comfort her, to make her
smile but I do not know how
for I am still too young.

Then I see something bright,
like a ray of light making its way
inside and getting bigger.
then it is gone, disappearing
as fast as it appeared,
replaced by some unfamiliar
thing, that is inching
closer and closerto where I am.

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An ultrasound is used to determine how the fetus is positioned inside the uterus. The doctor uses his forceps to tear the fetus out of the womb, taking out its lower extremities firsts, pulling it into the vagina. Afterwards, the doctor uses his fingers to deliver the opposite lower extremity, and then the torso, the shoulders and the upper extremities.

However, the skull lodges itself in the internal cervical canal, so the doctor proceeds and hooks his fingers over the shoulders of the fetus. While maintaining this tension, lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders with the fingers, the doctor then inserts a blunt tipped surgical scissor into the base of the skull and spreads the tips apart to enlarge the wound. Then a suction cathter is inserted into the skull and the brain is sucked out. The skull than collapses and the heand passes easily through the cervix.

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I feel something cold
touch me.
OUCH!
It’s poking me, hurting me!
It’s trying to get me!
I try to get away but I can’t
there is too little space.
AAAARRRGGGHHH!
It’s got me, it's got my legs.
I try to kick and flail about
but the thing has a firm grasp,
leaving me, paralyzed.
I try to scream and shout,
but I couldn’t.
I try to call out to her
but she is unreachable.
I try to get away but I can’t
there is too little space.
I look at the spiral cord in my belly,
the cord that connects me to her.
Does she feel it too?
Does she know I’m hurting?

Then I feel something pulling me,
it's trying to take me out, out of my safe place!
Away from her, her voice, her warmth.
Then i felt a wisp of wind on my legs,
on my torso, and on my chest.
Then something grips my shoulders,
it's hurting me; it's grasping my head
then i feel this sharp, piercing pain
in the back of my head.
The pain is still there, it won’t quit,
It’s sucking the life out of me, I feel myself
drifting, drifting away.
Everything is turning red, and then
black.

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The dead fetus is then placed in a container, as requested by the patient. The doctor gives her, her dead child. A few hours later, she secretly digs a hole in her parent’s garden and buries the remains of her baby. She cries her eyes out until her whole body shook, until she loses all strength to cry anymore.

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I ask myself why,
why she let this happen,
why she did not protect me
I ask myself why,
why she has hurt me,
why she has killed me.
She probably doesn’t want me.
I don’t think she even liked me at all.

I think
she hates me.

written for and inspired by a friend, l.c.p.k.