For the first time this year, The White Review Poet’s Prize was open to poets based anywhere in the world. Last month we announced a shortlist of eight poets. ...
Tabitha Siklos is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a freelance writer, a qualified lawyer and is currently working on a biography of her great grandmother
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After sex that night, which was at best perfunctory, I lay on my back on top of the duvet with my knees drawn up to my chest, like I’d seen Maude do in The Big Lebowski Owen was in the bathroom and I could tell from the sporadic muffled yelps that he was tweezing his nose hair
‘Gravity,’ I said aloud I’d read about gravity-assisted conception, how to give the swimmers a better chance Owen was the one who cooed over babies, so I assumed he would applaud my initiative
I was right Three weeks later, I waited nervously on a deckchair in our small garden, while Owen checked the pregnancy test One blue line meant no hCG hormone, no baby Two blue lines meant baby Of course it was two I knew even before Owen burst through the patio doors, holding the pee-stick triumphantly in the air, a wide grin on his face I just knew I stood up and we gripped each other tightly
‘This moment,’ he said, to me, to the cluster of cells in my uterus, ‘this moment we will remember forever’
Owen knelt to kiss my stomach and when he raised his face to me there was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before It may have been wonder Or excitement Or something else
Week 12
When I arrived home after work, Owen was in the narrow galley kitchen rinsing salad with filtered water and blackening two tuna steaks on a griddle
‘To get rid of the bugs,’ he said, as he served up pieces of desiccated fish with a side of damp lettuce I was finally hungry again and could have murdered a rare steak with blue cheese sauce, but I guessed Owen would rather I went hungry than let me eat bloodied meat and unpasteurised cheese He poured a glass of wine and a glass of milk and we sat down at the small table
‘I checked the book today,’ he said He’d spent the last few weeks reading What To Expect When You’re Expecting and regaling me with facts about the developments in my womb He