Letting Go

by Marlene DeVere


            Here I was, nearly 40, trying to get knocked up. The joke’s lost on me. I had borne ten years of fear and avoiding what I was now trying do. IVF sounds like it belongs in an investment brochure not a clinic with a doctor probing deep within my inner sanctum, millimeters away from penetrating my heart. The needle goes beyond acceptance of what is, with hope for what might be. I hope to be a mother.
             The light is subdued, almost nonexistent. A reminder of what fading into emotional oblivion feels like. The table is cold, unyielding, not unlike my body. The smell is more antiseptic than Cupid’s Quiver.
             The journey begins. The expectation is great. It is always great and powerful and oh, so challenging. The loci of control—the husband and the doctor—perform their duties.

Unsuccessfully. 
Nothing is easy.
Nothing does hurt.

             The dove builds a nest of twigs and feathers and does so out of evolutionary need; yet the baby chick fails to thrive, has fallen or has been pushed out onto the hard, stark, sun bleached sidewalk to be swept away.
             Life has taken its capricious turn into nothingness.
The choices that remain are to try again and risk failure.

Or to just let go.


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Marlene DeVere is retired from a career in teaching, broadcast journalism, and advertising. She has lived in most sections of the country and in the Middle East. She is now living in Tucson, Arizona and working on a collection of short stories. She has been published in Harpy Hybrid Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Bright Flash Literary Review, Oddball Magazine and Angels on Earth.