Tom had a vasectomy at eighteen. Now he was forty-one. I always knew I didn’t want kids ... I was nineteen, still felt like a kid, and Tom seemed to like me. We were in his apartment and he was pouring me clear cups of rum. Every once in a while, he would raise the music one volume notch so conversation was harder.
So nothing comes out? I asked. What? Tom started laughing. When you come, nothing comes out? Tom was doing that gaspy-whisper laugh, vibrating so fast I remember him as blurry. No, sweetie. Something still comes out.
I started crying with Tom inside me. Soundless so he wouldn't notice. On the train ride home, I watched a mother put a breast in her baby’s mouth. I didn’t want Tom’s children, but it ached in me that twenty-three years ago, before I was born, he already knew he didn’t want mine.
