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She’s being covered with a green tablecloth, they are taking far too long, she feels like pushing the baby out now, before they are ready. A. is there by her head, swathed in robes, hats, masks. He has forgotten her glasses. “Push now,” the doctor says. Jea
A pause; a wet kitten slithers between her legs. “Why don’t you look?” says the doctor, but Jea
Jea
As for the vision, there wasn’t one. Jea
The next morning Jea
(It was to me, after all, that the birth was given, Jea
The window is two panes with a Venetian blind sandwiched between them; it turns by a knob at the side. Jea
All she can see from the window is a building. It’s an old stone building, heavy and Victorian, with a copper roof oxidized to green. It’s solid, hard, darkened by soot, dour, leaden. But as she looks at this building, so old and seemingly immutable, she sees that it’s made of water. Water, and some tenuous jellylike substance. Light flows through it from behind (the sun is coming up), the building is so thin, so fragile, that it quivers in the slight dawn wind. Jea
Jea
After that the baby is carried in, solid, substantial, packed together like an apple. Jea