Sunday Short: 'Thanksgiving in Mongolia' by Ariel Levy

I got pregnant quickly, to my surprise and delight, shortly before my thirty-eighth birthday. It felt like making it onto a plane the moment before the gate closes—you can’t help but thrill. After only two months, I could hear the heartbeat of the creature inside me at the doctor’s office. It seemed like magic: a little eye of newt in my cauldron and suddenly I was a witch with the power to brew life into being. Even if you are not Robinson Crusoe in a solitary fort, as a human being you walk this world by yourself. But when you are pregnant you are never alone.

I feel like I've recommended a few miscarriage pieces recently, but this one by Ariel Levy is particularly brutal. She captures the thrill of a pregnancy and the heartbreak of loss, the consuming effect of it, so perfectly it's hard to know what else to say about this piece. It's lovely. It's awful.

You can read 'Thanksgiving in Mongolia' by Ariel Levy over at The New Yorker website.