And so I lie in bed and feel what I don’t need come out of me. A steady ooze of bloody, amorphous clots slides out of me for days and with it flows all the guilt and regret and fear that I have carried, and while I sleep, people stronger than I am silently take it all away and dispose of it properly. When I wake, I hold my baby and I think about how he is my second opal that I can forever draw a circle around and point to as being mine.
