Mom

People talk about how you end up with someone that’s like your parents, which always struck me as something weird and Freudian, until I met Lena. She looked more like my mom than my mom did sometimes, with the same wide, thoughtful brown eyes. The kind that remind you of the melting chocolate chips in homemade cookies: warm, soft, and sweet.

Her eyes bore into mine as my tongue wound its way around the wet folds between her legs. She pulled at my hair and I trailed kisses up her stomach as I replaced my tongue with my fingers. I sucked on the flesh that was pulled tight across her collarbones as she bucked against my hand, forcing my fingers deeper. She was warm and slick, and I gasped with her as she tightened her legs around me. My gasp resounded from the sudden prickling of a winter breeze coming in through the cracked window. It sent unpleasant goosebumps across my skin, chilled and starkly different from the smooth warmth of her body on mine. I focused on the heat inside her and the places her body met mine as she moved.

I closed my eyes for a second, imagining wrapping myself up in a blanket as warm as she felt around my fingers, not unlike the feeling I got curled in the quilt my mom made for me before I’d left for school. Lena’s moans brought me back to her; I slipped another finger in. I wondered how many fingers I could fit my whole hand? My fist? Would she like that? I remembered learning that a vagina could stretch enough to accommodate a baby.

I flexed my other hand—definitely smaller than a baby. Another frigid breeze wound its way around my body, and my mother’s words echoed, “I kept you warm and safe inside me for nine months.” I imagined that, the warmth and comfort, what it would be like. A blanket, I thought, or maybe more like a cocoon. If a full-grown human found itself in another womb, would it emerge as something new?

Without thinking, I fit another finger in, then eventually my fist. She pushed into me; she liked it. Her moans were loud, and I pushed deeper. She began to thrash at my elbow, her mouth wide as she screamed. I couldn’t hear her, though; I only saw the big, warm brown eyes of my mother, welcoming me home. I was up to my shoulders by the time the next wave of cold air hit me. It was so jarring in comparison to the smooth, warm chamber my arms inhabited, that it propelled me forward. My head dove in; it was quiet, and dark, and above all, I wasn’t cold. She’d stopped moving much before this point. I pushed with my legs until my torso was firmly placed in her. I wondered briefly if I would fit wholly. I was bigger than her, so I shifted, and tucked my head into my chest as I curled my spine in. Slowly, the rest of me followed. The fetal position worked as well now as it had twenty-three years ago. I was wrapped in a smooth dark cocoon. I felt safe and comfortable; the stress of life seemed miniscule here. Nothing to stress over when encapsulated, where life is fostered and protected. Maybe I could live here forever.

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Corrin Bronersky is a Chicago based writer and can be found in various coffee shops around the Chicagoland area. She eats, sleeps, and breathes words and coffee.  She has been recently published in The Lab Review at Columbia College Chicago.