A piece from a Succulent Words workshop participant on the theme of “coming back as something else after this life.”

LIFE AFTER LIFE

When I had an abortion at 19 years old I thought it was the end. The end of my first pregnancy and hiding it. The end of worry and the end of that first dose of wonder at my magical woman’s body. Throughout the years I thought of that extricated cluster of joined but undefined cells from time to time—not so much with sadness and never with regret, but with curiosity at what those cells would have added up to. When I thought of them, they always felt male and that added to the mystery that a different sex than mine could—literally—emerge from my female sex. When I was pregnant years later, it also felt male. And when, bathed in dawn’s pink and feminine rays he emerged from my womanness onto our bedroom sheets, I put him on my chest against my bulging breast and whispered, “Thanks for coming back and not holding that first attempt against me.”

– Sabriga Turgon