Ordinance of Impossibility: The life she lives may never be the one she desires, but one perilously close.

 

            “Ess, did you eat your boyfriend?”

            Anara perched over her older sister’s shoulder and inspected the red flower Ester had arranged out of pomegranate seeds on her lap. A neat pile placed delicately as if each plump orb were her child, or at least had the potential to be.

            Gazing into the glint of seeds sparkling like planets in the sun, Ester pressed into her lilac dress, massaging in a circular rhythm over her abdomen. She traced the ditches in her skin where she had carved a uterus over her womb. Only, she wasn't born with a womb. She wasn't born with anything she'd wanted. All she had were dreams: of carrying a child to term; of having been born in a feminine body.

            Ester plucked a seed and suffocated it in a fist when Anara wasn't looking.