Lose Some, Win Some

by Emily Bertholf

She hoped it was her sister calling back to say it was a bad joke, her father was alive. He survived the stroke. She could visit him at the hospital now. The strangely familiar man's voice on the line turned out to be her doctor. The tests came back positive, he said. She was pregnant.

6S

Emily Bertholf received her BA in English from the University of Iowa. Her poems have been published in Xpressions and Lyrical Iowa, but mostly live in the dark caverns of old file drawers and dusty notebooks. She lives in Milwaukee, WI with her husband, three children, and a pug.