My children were both born in the same bed they were conceived in: an old brass double with a high headboard that came with their father into our marriage. The bedroom was the same too, west-facing, with the bulky radiator against the window and the large wide maple outside. The first time, the bed held me up as I squatted at its foot, naked, bearing down hard as I clutched the heavy post. Perhaps I held back, until the threat of moving to the hospital loomed, a shock to my insistent planting in this place only. I clenched my eyes then, traveled deep down into the pain and through it, emerging new with my child on the other side. The second time, my body began to push before the midwives arrived, and the baby slipped out like a fish, capped in his thin slick caul. His brother woke an hour later, as the commotion waned. I can see him standing beside the bed, backed up against the radiator: small, stunned, wide-eyed.

From 100 Words: The Beauty of Brevity. Word prompt: bedroom. From one of the final days. My 100 days of writing prompts and daily witnessing and being witnessed are over, for now. How I miss them already!