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Just Like We’d Planned 

Taylor Fedorchak

After the positive test, I call the doctor. I’m told 
they won’t see me for another month
and a half. They’ve stopped 

“confirming pregnancies.” What they mean
and don’t say, is that some women 
will miscarry in this time and they don’t want 

those bodies in their office. I call my mom 
and she mentions the pain I’ve been having,  
the possibility of ectopic pregnancy. 

I walk into the emergency wearing two masks.
Cinnamon hand sanitizer in my coat pocket. 
In the waiting room, an older woman is there 

for her daughter. They told her she would be fine, 
but she has no immune system. When I get called 
back, I mention the positive test. Say I can’t 

get a doctor’s appointment anywhere in town. 
This is when I start to consider moving back 
to the east coast, away from the jagged 

mountains and dry air. That mural of Prince
I always meant to pose in front of. A nurse 
rolls me past people on ventilators and I hold 

my breath. I just want to make sure
everything is fine I say to the lady who coughs 
as she does my sonogram. Down the hall, a woman 
is screaming as they tell us congratulations.

Lilac Reception

Beside him, I dream of a dead

black bird             

in the middle of our shared

bar of soap. The disease I know

in my body before

waking. Sometimes it’s 

not the dead bird, but the children 

   he has somewhere & we don’t know

or we go to a wedding &

he points out 

someone from the band he wants 

instead of me. Sometimes it’s all of the last 

names I scribbled after mine 

before his.

Writer’s Statement

I wrote "Just Like We'd Planned" during my last semester at NMSU. Most of my work is autobiographical, and this poem is about the day I found out I was pregnant. I knew then it wouldn't be a "normal" pregnancy because of everything happening in the world. The title is sarcastic because my partner and I never imagined we would begin our parenthood journey during a pandemic. 

Back in February, I imagined things would be brighter by now—that people would be less divided by the issues of masks and vaccines. Less afraid.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case as we move into fall 2021. One thing I’ve realized more than ever during my pregnancy is that I cannot control the world around me, but I can control myself and the home I will bring my daughter into. 

"Lilac Reception" is about my ongoing experience living with OCD and how it sometimes presents itself even in my dreams. I see this poem as a collection of subconscious fears. 

Strangely, living through the pandemic has not made my OCD any worse (or better for that matter). I had been operating as if the world was contaminated prior to all of this, so I’ve just kept moving forward.

about the writer