For a while I thought I was pregnant.

I imagined a little wonder-child swelling up in me; soaking in my internal fluids and beating next to my ribcage. It's tiny soul somehow pushing my insides deep up the canal of my esophagus and around the hinges of my back; my skin stretching against it's encasing. I'd go home and grab my flat tummy and warm my hands around it's invisible soul; giving love to my not so known insides.

"You're pregnant?"

"I'm sorry."

But I wasn't.

We were in the back of his mothers van, rocking this way and that to tunes that warmed our souls. His body was rough and forceful, but his words were like love that sang to my eardrums and gave me orgasms. He rolled inside and out, like the nights cold looming air, and soon I wanted to scream and explode and go home but I told myself it was love. I told myself in the end it would be worth it.

Jimmy said he loved me, and I knew that I really loved him too. He told me he'd take care of me and we'd get out of this place one night on the phone.

"You me and the baby," he'd said.

In the night I found myself in a wet nightmare; souls swimming and drowning. God was telling me that I had sinned wedlock and I would have to pay. He shoved his golden fingers deep into the puncturable cells of my stomach and pulled my insides out like stringed meat. I gulped in more night air than I could swallow, but no matter how much I tried the gulps didn't put my insides back. He laughed at me and told me I was a fool and threw my inside-child into the ovens of hell.

I woke to harsh air and blood soaking me from head to toe.