Pink Balloon

My reflection on the train is blurred. I am out of focus, a picture taken by a child. I am transparent too, like a colourful shadow. It is so easy to look through myself. Other people seem to be stroke after stroke of perfect letters and words and paragraphs, and then there is me: one silly scribble to mar the page. I am envious of their definition, their clean-cut lines and eyes that aren't lost. I suppose, to strangers, my lines seem clean-cut also, not frayed as they feel. Life is so uncomplicated when it's not your own. Something tugs in my hand and I remember my stolen pink balloon. It has settled against the window, hanging limply like an empty womb, my hand gripping its silver umbilical chord.

I had a soul in my womb once; a cluster of cells, a pearl my jewel of the sea. Memories of high-school scares faded into ridiculousness as the reality of the situation evaporated any dramatisation. He came in me and I knew instantly. I felt him go through me like arrows and a pinprick of light started glowing in my womb immediately. I took a morning after pill and then forgot all about it. I adopted a craving for cheese and an intolerance for any transport. One day I realised that I'd worn my white shorts for the entire month of February.
I was dreaming about the ocean when I got the results- one blue line too many. I thought about her all day, knowing that we wouldn't have much time together. Like Cinderella I was home by midnight, rum and remorse flowing through my body. A few hours later my boyfriend stumbled home so that I could spend the night making sure he didn't fall asleep in his own vomit. Silently I thanked him for reminding me how young and selfish we were.
I suffered silently and solitarily. I was selfish. I insisted that she was something I need to lose alone. He did not possess a womb. His hormones were not causing constant tears and he still enjoyed cheese the way a regular person would; he could never understand. I wish he'd fought for his right to sadness. I wish he'd be more indignant or even goddamn angry that I was refusing him the right to feel any connection at all to something we would never have. But he didn't.
One day I woke up and there was no glow in the heart of my womb. A few weeks later I put my hand between my legs instinctively, just in time to catch pieces of me as they fell out of my body. A hoarse cry tumbled out of my mouth as I realised what I was holding, my jewel of the sea, nothing more but a few slabs of meat.

The train skids in to the station and I pause for too long until I unfold myself to rise. The doors beep their warning but I leap through them anyway. The slam of their meeting coincides neatly with the clattering of my heels against the platform. There is a moment of silence, a revival of the engine roar and then a sharp tug. I am spun like wool as I realise that I am no longer with balloon; it is being mimscarried by the train. I am left with nothing but a severed umbilical chord, its silver fading fast, and a long walk home.