“‘I was as drawn to the poignancy in Implantation Bleeding as I was to its curious structure. The very long sentence in its first paragraph locates the reader with lovely rhetorical rhythm in the narrative present of our narrator and their partner, a couple in love who are trying to conceive. Its middle paragraph, which echoes that initial rhythm, describes without any emotional editorializing the simple steps the couple takes to attempt to identify whether this attempt has resulted in implantation. This establishes in turn and with admirable economy the conditions of the couple's emotional state which become clear only in the story's brief, concluding paragraph: that deeply embodied sympathy which is our only ballast in an unbearably fragile, suspended moment of not-knowing, when we can neither hope nor grieve..”
—Rachel Lyon, contest judge and author of The Fruit of the Dead and Self Portrait with Boy

Implantation Bleeding

by Olivia Fantini

Winner of the 2024 Fiction Contest

Here is what I have learned: ten to twelve days after conception, some women experience spotting, known as implantation bleeding, which arrives on or before the date of an expected period, marking the fertilized egg’s successful attachment to the wall of the uterus, and so, ten days after our dear friend has jizzed into a cup and mixed it with a non-FDA approved stabilizer we bought off the internet, after he has wrapped the cup in ice packs and overnight FedExed it from Seattle to Minneapolis, after the package has been carefully placed behind the Costco Christmas greenery arrangement by the front door to protect against porch piracy, after my partner and I have joked that it is not the stork but the FedEx carrier who brings babies, after I have opened the package and found most of the sample spilled in transit with just enough left to fill the small plastic syringe, after my partner has placed a pillow beneath her back to elevate her hips and the puppy has lept onto the bed to lick her face and I have removed the puppy and the puppy has barked at being removed, after my partner has placed her feet against the wall and opened her legs and scrunched up her face at the cold temperature of the syringe entering her body, when she starts to bleed on that tenth day and then on the eleventh and even on the twelfth, there is still no knowing what this blood means. 

We look at her pad, track the start and stop of blood, analyze its color. We google variations of the same question: implantation bleeding or period? WebMD, Mayo Clinic, Healthline. We read the same articles last month, and the month before that, and the month before that, but we read them again. It is too soon to test. We wait. The bleeding will stop or it won’t, and then we will know.

Here is what my body knows: this warm, sweet-smelling, heart-beating being that I have twined up my life with is bleeding when she does not usually bleed, and so, though it is not my time , knowing only one way to be with another woman, I bleed too.

Published May 18th, 2025