Nine months pregnant, Sarah's belly stopped beating. Womb Tomb--that's what she thought when the doctors sent her home. Womb Tomb all night long. She asked them cut it out and let her go. No, you must have a vaginal delivery they said.

They said, Come back tomorrow.

Constipated with 8.5 pounds of dead baby, a regular living sepulcher.

She thought she killed it. She mowed the lawn today. She ate a crab cake yesterday. She forgot to wash the avocado.

The mowing.

Or it could have been the two year old clinging to his mother's neck, sitting on the shelf of protruding person, covered by a fat dress. Don't press.

Fat dress. Yellow with pink flowers for Easter.

The hospital dress isn't fat enough. Her butt shows.

The socks. They were ready. Stacked in the bassinette with teeny tee shirts and burp clothes and blankets. Newly washed by Sarah, they anticipated the arrival. But when there was a no show Sarah was too tired to tell them. So they sat, and soon they cried for their baby. Sarah cried too. She didn't wash the avocado.

The nurse says push. Push. Pushpushpushpushpushpushpushpushpush. The doctor, nostrils pumping steam, scalded the nurses when the mother lost consciousness. He told them this mother has had other babies and if this one were coming out they'd have to peel it off the wall. It would be a glorious blast of baby.

The nurses, like teenagers say, OOOO. Who's the president? Sarah says Carter because it's so dark, even though it's Clinton. Get the vacuum. Sarah hears the hum in the darkness and thinks how comfortable she is so snuggly down here letting herself go, drifting away from the pushpushpushpush. The head is out says the doctor. Sarah, still down there, sees her very own Kenmore upright with a baby head clogging the suction. Now for the rest of body. The Kenmore revs up and she hears them say the body is out. Sarah's husband wants to know if she wants to see it. Can she wake up? Want to see a baby head and a baby body? A cute corpse?

The socks are screaming now. They want to know how Sarah did it. Was it the mowing? Or did she vacuum in secret? It was her very own Kenmore. Push it, pull it. Sarah isn't sure, but she tells the socks she's sorry and suffocates them in a Ziploc bag to make them shut up.

The baby is all in one piece when she opens her eyes. He looks like he did the second he stopped breathing. Like a baby who was one hour from being born. The socks whisper, So close, so close. She knows it was the mowing but she just couldn't stand the grass being so long for one more day.