Delicate Condition

by Danielle Valentine

that he was dead, dying, that he’d called to say goodbye, but I’d missed him and I’d never hear his voice again. A part of me even thought maybe I deserved it, that things were going too well, that I was overdue for some trauma.

“Kids just weren’t in the cards for us.” A muscle in Dex’s jaw clenched.

Anger was so much easier to sit with than grief.

“I’ve always hated how people separate women who want kids from women who don’t, like we’re two separate species. It’s infuriating how people insist on defining cis women’s entire lives by this one choice.”