This New Kind of Beauty, This New Kind of Love
Alison Kinney

“IT’S CALLED false labor,” the doctor tells you. “A very common mistake for first-time mothers. The baby will be ready soon,” she says, putting her hand on your shoulder. “We’ll see you then.” 
Everybody smiles.
You board the A Line train, taking your husband’s hand as if it were the railing of a long and steep stairwell. There are plenty of places to stumble. With the weight of worry on your back, a sidewalk’s crack becomes a canyon. 
The train climbs its trellis and you are racing above the city, tracking the lights that shine from apartment windows as they rush by. You want to peer through the open curtains and blinds to see who lives there, to count up the mothers and ask them how it’s done. 
Your husband has taken his hand from yours to lay it on your thigh, massaging down to your knee. It would feel good, if you weren’t so unsteady, so you grab his palm back into yours and hold fast.
“This is our stop,” he says. 
But you are not going home, not without the baby in your arms. 
“Let’s go to the end of the line,” you say. “I’ve never been to the end of the line.” 
The train doors open and he begins to stand. 
You are not budging. 
The train doors close. 
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go to the end of the line.”
The city rises in height and then falls, low and wide. Rectangles: warehouses, garages, parking lots, hundreds of mail trucks all in a row. Then roads and roads and roads, until there is only empty land. The openness of plains and prairie gives way to billowing sand. Dunes fall to ocean waves that breathe as you hope to breathe, rhythmically and unapologetically. 
Last stop. 
Out the window the view is wide and soft. There is no place to fall. Herds of buffalo are roaming earth’s edge, grazing on lupin and dunegrass. The sun is rising. You let go of your husband’s hand so that he can stand and take in the view: this new kind of beauty, this new kind of love.

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Alison Jean Kinney is a writer based in Arcata, CA. Her stories have appeared in small literary journals as well as fine art books in galleries such as the San Francisco Center for the Book and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. She has a MA in Folklore from the University of North Carolina.

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