Frostwriting

In Vitro & Halfway

by Laura Solomon

In Vitro

My children are made by me, but borne by others.
The pain of childbirth holds no appeal; the screeching, the tearing, the blood,
the whole world drowned in amniotic fluid.  A flood. 
The subsequent stitches of brightly coloured thread.

How infinitely preferable to breed them in a petri dish,
pinch of you, grain of me, eye of something-or-other – behold, the mighty zygote.
Nothing is left to chance, I plan it all according to the law that I was handed down.
Aim, Method, Results, Conclusion – a fourth form experiment of sorts.

You can call me clinical, I don’t care.  I don’t believe in accidents.  Fate is for fools.
My pristine white coat, my catheter of silicone, the blank white walls of the lab;
these instruments of creation are all I’ve ever known.

This is the way a world begins – manufactured in a room where there are no seasons.

There is not one mother, but many. 
Fresh girls are a dime a dozen in this neck of the woods.
Where do they come from? I hear you ask.  Your steady little supply. 
Please, allow me to reply.  These girls are found all over. 
Some I discover out on the street, perched in doorways or gutters,
some advertise in the local paper, ‘Womb For Rent’, in bold black type,
some I kidnap in broad daylight or by the pale glare of the moon.  Slave trade. 

Some girls are cheaper than others.

One by one, they climb onto my table.  I plant those little lives. 

I monitor the mothers, pump them full of fish oils, vitamins, milk,
snatch cigarettes from their mouths, take the vodka from their hands.
“Mind how you go,” I say.  “You girls need to be careful now. 
Enough of your skylarking.”
I poke and prod and scan.  All goes according to plan. 

“A splendid diagnosis,” I solemnly declare, with voice pitched low to hide my fear.

Once the cells are implanted, I chart their progress, watch them grow.
I tend to them as you would to a garden, 
count up the weeks in staggered steps, a rocket launch in reverse.
There are important milestones.  For instance -
week six, when the hearts start up and the tadpole tails shrink.
The vanishing reminder of our amphibian roots.
Week seven, when they sprout spinal cords and brains.
A branching nervous system.  They are not yet old enough to feel pain. 
They will learn to tell the difference between dark and light
and at week thirty-nine they are ready for life.

They could be born at any time. 

When I am least prepared, they arrive,
a great rush - multiple mothers, multiple births,
in a gush the waters break –
an army of them, all up and down the hospital ward,
all lungs fill with air,
the shout goes out, a unanimous cry,
as myriad tiny eyes see daylight for the first time.

Somewhere, something shatters.  A pane. 
And so the future is born.

I give them no names.
I hawk them for profit, sell them on.
If you’re cunning you can make quite a mark-up.
I never said I wasn’t mercenary.

“How heartless,” you say, “how cut-throat, to give what was yours away.”
You’re oblivious to the fact that selling isn’t giving.
You don’t know where to draw the line. 

How can you say that what I do is wrong?
To whom do they belong? 
To no-one.  They were never mine.

Previously published in Blackmail Press

Halfway

Nobody knows the nature of the thing. 
For weeks it has sat in its jar, reeking not of life or death but of both.
Something in between. 
It has the beginnings of a tail, two legs; a distinctly primordial air.   
Eyes as dark as black holes peer out at the world.  Anti-suns. 

This morning we sat at the breakfast table, nothing much to say,
until you thought it wise to mention the war in Iraq -
you knew my brother was fighting there and you wanted some kind of reaction.
As a scientist with electrodes prods at a frog to see what twitches.
Nothing moved - my face remained as blank as a sheet of paper. 
Decades ago I trained myself not to react to you. 

All last night the baby cried – an incessant wail reminiscent of sirens.
The door to its room was left ajar – but no-one moved to comfort it;
I thought it your turn, you thought it mine,
Lord, pity the child born to those who walk the line!
You wept for the kid when you awoke, but I thought crocodile tears. 

This afternoon I stumbled across a basket full of washing
that you’d abandoned halfway to the line.
Shirts and sheets spilled every which way,
but you could not tell me when I asked,
what on earth could have occurred to interrupt such a vital, terrible task?

The railway line that runs down the back of our house never was completed.
You tried to tell me that they ran out of track, but I knew that to be a blatant lie.         
It was you who called a halt to proceedings –
phoned up British Rail and begged them not to continue.  Such is your way. 

This chessboard that you forced me to walk away from,
hangs suspended in midair (there are wires but they are invisible).
You seem to have the feeling that you’ve won,
captured my queen and Lord only knows what else,
but I know the truth to be closer to some unholy eternal stalemate. 
That grin’s a Cheshire’s grin.  When it’s God v the Devil, no-one loses, no-one wins

Previously published in Four Volts