Real Care

By Kyra Lisse

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In seventh grade, I was sent home
for the weekend with a baby
with a battery for a heart.
She was born with software that measured how quickly
I could get out of bed when, at three a.m.,
the soundbox in her belly
started simulating cries—born
with an app that tracked how apt I was
at determining what she needed.

I raised a bottle to her hard plastic
lips; she did not suckle. I pulled
her cheek toward my budding breast;
she did not settle. I peeled off
her spotless diaper and swapped it
for a new one, tried to align the sensor
that was sewn into the cloth
with the chip underlying her absent
vagina. Still, my baby cried.

On Monday, about seventeen hours after
my baby stopped breathing
(I was sitting on the couch, and she, in my lap;
I thought her forehead smelled
sweet, like baby powder, like real baby,
and then she powered off as planned),
Mrs. Chaiken, a mother herself, scrolled
through the automated report and gave me
a grade: ninety-six percent.
She congratulated me

and took my baby away.

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Kyra Lisse is a writer and editor from the Philadelphia area. A graduate of Hollins University's MFA in Creative Writing, she has seen her work published in Ghost City Review, Sky Island Journal, Paper Brigade, New Voices Magazine, and Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, among other places. Kyra currently lives in Lancaster, PA.

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