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This was not the case with Jenn, there were things I could not share with her, not because I could say them, but because she could not understand, or would not listen. There were words I never wished to speak, not wanting to hear them from any source, especially my own mouth, but they crashed out of me one night as typhoon winds. These epithets rang relentlessly, pounded word after word, ripped the sea-bells from our shores, tore at the sand and roots, exposing.

But I didn’t stop there.

There are words that build amidst a lack of trust the way pressure intensifies against the body, atmosphere upon atmosphere, as one dives too deep beneath the surface, gasses boiling from the chest. If one descends too far, yet notices, and attempts to rise from the depths too quick, the fluids within spark, and joints weld to new positions. Should one survive, the body remains bent from the sea, an exposed truth, intrinsic and irrevocable.

“Push, Honey! Push!”

The room reverberated with “pushes,” from behind masked faces, filling every space between our green-clad bodies and rubber gloves and the polished arms that swung overhead, affixed to portable chromed bases, flush and heavy against the floor, gripping, spreading the whitest of lights, directing them.

Perhaps if Jenn admitted her infidelities, we might have smoothed things out, or at least made a cleaner break, but with irrefutable evidence of her missteps so early in our marriage, a harsh split seemed inevitable. Her ongoing affairs, one in particular, with an ex-boyfriend who groped her at our engagement party, teetered her through our apartment door, the red glow of morning’s sun fast on her heels. She rushed to shower, avoiding contact or conversation, then expired, only to awaken later in denial. She denied any impropriety, including her early a.m. arrivals, her drunken swaggering, and worst of all, she maniacally refused to address the growing bulge in her midriff.

Episiotomy, the sound of it was fathomless, scissors unzipping the tightness around a crowning head, matted black hair coated with vernix.