Clockwise
Quite late into my pregnancy, the day I eventually did pregnancy tests and all three came out positive (Surprise! I’m here!), my husband said he’d always yearned to be a father, (Have I developed something new? These are voices outside!), a statement of desired fatherhood that came as a shock, or, let’s say, a seven-degree alarm on a scale of zero to ten, (Water, water, wateeerrrr, swimming in a blister) because my husband used to say it’s crazy to bring a baby to this world, and I believed he understood my point and accepted my decision, though he always beamed at babies and said to fathers they were lucky, so I guess (she says: I will change diapers, will hear a baby cry, will be like my tired girl friends), his huge capacity of devotion had been seeking a route, which didn’t pass solely through me, (Here I am! Feel me. I’ll kick a little, see? Again! Again! Happy?), or maybe not at all through me or anyone, yet, because in his youth, my husband credited people with more generosity than they actually had, lost his family in a war and that pain squandered his capacity for love (A head against my kicking leg. Father! A hand over my head. Mother!) or so he thought, but his love for our child grew high and bright like wheat in the following months, and after all he did trust my contribution to his child, and this grew into a plant of love between us too, and I was afraid to lose it when the baby came out, so I wanted to turn the clock back (something’s wrong, what’s wrong, I’ll see you soon, Mother, Father, I promise! I’ll be yours, I want out.), but when the baby was born, and light I didn’t know existed within me burst out too, there we were, the three of us, and the clock, for all I cared, could go on and never stop.
Avital Gad-Cykman
Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the story collections Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest. Her stories appear in The Dr. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Michigan Quarterly, among others. They have been included twice in Best Short Fictions, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International anthology, and Best Microfiction 2025. She lives in Brazil and holds a PhD in English Literature, focused on minorities, gender, and trauma.
