The Growing Bones

Every night he dreamt of babies—doll sized babies that wiggled and cried, then shrunk in his arms until they were only almonds in the dip of his palm. In his sleep, they unraveled like old sweaters. The babies had stitching and seams that yawned open, and white bits of fluff stuck to his feet as if it were wet snow.
His fears didn’t begin at the two blue lines, intersecting one another like a steeple cross, but before that, when she stopped swallowing her pill each night, and climbed on top of him. Her fingers combed over his bare abdomen and the tight space between his thighs. He tried to enjoy it, but buried his face in the wings of her clavicles, inhaling the soapy scent of her skin, and willed himself to come quickly.
The dreams, though, were a side effect of the ultrasound. It was too early for a guess at the sex, but far enough along to watch the baby’s hand as it collapsed its fingers into a fist, then pressed them outward as if to touch them through the screen. Those fingers, he thought, would be as delicate and dangerous as fish bones.
In the bedroom there was no light, but his wife stirred next to him. Once, she had a boyish, ballerina body. Her stomach was so warm he sweat beside it.
“I had a dream about the baby,” he confessed.
He imagined her awake, rolling over and staring into him, unearthing the withering flowers of his nightmares. Instead, she slept on. He swallowed his saliva, but something caught in his throat. It was sharp and stinging, like the slivery bone of a gutted fish.