Black Pudding

Ninth Post, Three poems about miscarriage - trigger warning childloss/trying for a child

Black Pudding                                                                                                 
 
I am somebody´s wife.                                       
I know because the pin prick 
of ruby at my knuckle, tells me in blood 
when he is away, that I am still wed.                        
 
I have bled for most of our marriage
 
bleeding out babies 
from ink blot, to comma, to china doll
birthing, after birthing
periods trickling, gushing
sticking like mud glue to my knickers.                 
 
You could make black pudding of me-as-wife 
cook me in spitting fat smelling of death 
and iron.                                                         
 
I would seek out the scalding of oil                       
the ferocious heat of the pan
to remind me 
why I am married.         

First published in Strix Magazine

I am never sure if writing about a poem is a good thing. The poem itself should speak words enough, but this platform seems to allow for a little more and of course I am at the beginning of my journey here and so it is also about you getting to know me.

I met my husband pretty late on in life I already had a daughter and I was in my late 30’s. I never considered marriage as a thing I would do - I was, to be frank, almost anti-marriage. I especially loathed the idea of being called someone’s wife! when I met Marcus all of those early ideas about marriage went out of my head and I just knew, luckily for me he felt the same way. Because we were older, after meeting within 5 months he had proposed and we had begun trying for a child. Biologically speaking I didn’t have much time left. Shortly after that I had my first miscarriage.

There was so much blood I have never seen so much blood! I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance and drifted in and out of this weird liminal state, likely shock and blood loss together. I hadn’t realised I was pregnant at that point as I had stopped using contraception and thought my period was just taking time to assert itself and there was this odd moment where the nurse told me I was pregnant while simultaneously I was losing it. I saw the blue baby in the china bowl of the toilet as big as the end of my thumb with veins like mycelium cradling it, it was hard to flush the toilet - but I did. On the way home from the hospital our car broke down, it was awful I just wanted to be in bed not bleeding by the side of the road waiting for rescue. A policemen saw us and stopped to help, he was so kind, his wife had lost a baby the previous year and he understood a little of what I was going through and tried to make our waiting easier and safer.

Breakdown

you surprised me womb 
sewn of tiger-hide 
locked with a crescent tooth

how you made a locket of yourself 
opened like a sticky clam 
heaved out your loved ones, pearls 
in tides of balsamic treacle 

the first time especially, when my legs foaled 
themselves and ran like the Ganges in spate 
I didn't understand I should be wailing by that pyre
	— though I was on my knees, soaked

counting the cups I filled 
as if I were a monsoon 
arrived after a drought 

the sound of it was like vomiting 

I wept by the roadside
face pressed to the taut seat 
reflective triangles marked me
as something to stare at 

ambulance men knew me for an emergency 
but not that what was emerging 
already had a hook in my heart 

like the tip of my finger beckoning 
to the watery depths, it called me 
until I was shaking with 
the effort of not following

This poem was long listed in the Plough Poetry Prize judged by Pascal Petite but this is its first publication.

If you would consider popping a tip in the tip jar I would be over the moon!

I had some sort of pstd after that - suddenly my legs would feel like that would give way out from under me just walking down the street. It was like this healthy woman I had assumed and felt I was, suddenly, was just as open to shit happening as everyone else, and that brings its own form of fear. 

The next miscarriage I was visiting Germany and the amniotic sac developed empty - no heartbeat could be detected. I had to wait just in case they had missed it, so we waited and waited, then I needed an aspiration - otherwise known as an abortion. Thank goodness I was in Germany and not a state in the USA that forbids such stuff (don’t get me started on why women NEED access to abortion!).

I had a nasty doctor though - he was creepy and handled me like I imagine a serial killer might touch his next prey, my husband could hear the doctor and anaesthetist (both gross old men) joking about me in the next room while I was under anaesthetic. So shocked and scared about what would happen to me we kept silent and just got the hell home before the tears came pouring down. (I’m sure this could invite a long form post about men in gynaecology and the attitude of medicine in general to women and their suffering, this is not the first time I have been treated horribly by a doctor and I am sure that is true for many of us)

In the Flat on The Rhein

The contours of us,
my husband and I. 
We could be babies, twins
hooked into one another, 
seeds in a broken shell.

There is wetness all over us
a silent seeping, we shape
a sob together, turn over  
make a noise like water 
slaps a rock.

I hear a passing boat
toil up the river,
it’s engine struggles
chugs against the flow.

I see my future
in its sound.

Birds open their throats
drill holes in the hard dark
with their piercing voices
until a trickling day bleeds in.

I am still fat, in the grey
but as the sun rises
I shrink visibly.

First published in Up the Duff - poems that take no life for granted

I also designed the cover for this book published by Beautiful Dragons Press

The third pregnancy was an ectopic pregnancy - in my fallopian tube. when the nurse told me from the scan that was what she was seeing I simply fainted - terrified at the possibility of halving/losing my fertility or at worst dying. Who knew you could ectopic pregnancies with Chemotherapy? Apparently a baby is very similar to cancer. 

In the end, luckily, I only had to have blood taken every two days for a few weeks to test my HGC levels until my body reabsorbed the baby. So despite looking like a junkie I didn’t have any of the much worse possibilities rock up.

We decided then to stop trying for children. In an agony of loss, I left my village on Dartmoor that I loved with all my heart and moved to Germany for a complete life change. Two days before I left England I found out I was pregnant again, unexpectedly, it was a frightening time for me moving country, leaving my support network, living in the city etc but my little girl arrived safely and beautifully into the most loving space she could’ve found.

Eventually I had a tattoo to commemorate all these beings that had spent time inside my body, each flower a child. The bracken symbolising Dartmoor, the larch symbolising Germany the oak marrying them both.

I settled on a theory that in this short time within me they had completed whatever they needed to on this earth. It was a way to make sense of the grief I carried and to try to look at the bigger picture.

Obviously many of my poems hark back to this time of great distress and I don’t want to bombard you with them so I will take my time slipping them in now and then without too much explanation in the future!