While You Stayed With Her,I Lost Everything

The day I hemorrhaged from the miscarriage, my mother and father raced through the rain toward the Family's clinic on the edge of the territory. On the way, a car came out of the dark and took them both.

I lay on the table and signed the blood pacts with hands still slick with my own blood, the papers a made person signs when life hangs in the balance.

The baby couldn't be saved. Neither could my parents.

And the man whose seventy-six calls had gone unanswered posted a glowing little celebration through the network.