Tag Archives: infertility

MIYA YAMANOUCHI: Behind Closed Smiles

Submissions, Touching, , ,

Barbecues were hardest.

“When are you two going to start a family?” they always asked.

“When the time is right,” she would reply, smiling.

“Don’t wait forever or it’ll be too late.”

She would nod politely, before returning home to an empty nursery and calendars red with a thousand crosses.

Miya Yamanouchi is a journalist in South Eastern Europe. Her poetry has been published in Poets and War and her fiction writing in Friday Flash Fiction.

JON SHANK: Futility

Amusing, Submissions, Touching, , , , ,

“They still hurt, Hon,” he said by way of answering the phone.

Two weeks and still he limped. But they’d agreed: after years of trying, at 43, they surrendered to time. So he’d endured the pain, swelling, and subsequent celibacy.

“I’m pregnant,” she replied. “You’re going to be a father.”

Jon Shank teaches high school English in Pennsylvania. He blogs at intothewake.wordpress.com.