Best Buried

Please note : stories are writers own and where requested, names have been withheld or changed to protect anonymity. If you have a story you'd like to share, please email us at [email protected] for more information.

Best buried by Sammy Maggs

It wasn’t the right time to tell our story then, so I buried it.

I hid the facts. 

I hid the fear, the tears, the pain. 

I showed the world how brave I was, how strong. 

But now it’s time to dig it up, to tackle it anew, 

to explain the story after you were born.

One month in, the usual sleepless nights. 

Overdoing things in an attempt to show I was coping. I was fine. 

My body had other ideas.

I found myself removed from you. 

Taken back to where you took your first breath. 

This time alone and bleeding. 

Pumping in the darkness. 

Forced to make painful decisions all by myself. 

Given science I didn’t understand. I still don’t.

Masked faces showing no empathy. 

No warm hugs. No warmth. 

Quiet corridors and hushed anxieties. 

Exchanging breast milk through a cracked door. 

Touch forbidden. 

A trickled tear falls.

All alone.

Hormones raging. Breasts aching.

Yearning to be back with you.

To smell you, to feel you.

Will you remember me?

Four trips in all. Each with growing restrictions. 

Less love. Less care. More science. 

And then to make a decision. Alone.

Under the knife again, removing parts of me that made you. 

Gone.

And after all that, did they check on me? 

Did they ask me how I was?

No.

But then other people were dying. Losing loved ones. The world in crisis. 

An inevitable slip to the bottom of the pile. 

Praised for being brave. 

At least I was alive I’d say. At least I was back with you.

So I buried it all.

In the battered capsule of that time.