It was your idea to drive to Pennsylvania to see the total eclipse. 87.9 percent coverage wasn’t good enough for you. Let’s do this for real, you said.

Knock, knock, you said once we pulled onto the highway.

What? I said, pulling the sun visor down as we drove. You were voted class clown back when we were in high school. Always making jokes. Always defending your title even though your chin stubble is growing in gray.

You’re supposed to say who’s there.

Oh, sorry, go again, I said.

No, you ruined it.

The highway stretched on like one of those race car video games where the landscape keeps repeating, glitching, refreshing. We could have been anywhere. You took one hand off the wheel, inched your fingers along the inseam of my shorts. Not now, I breathed, crossing my ankle over my knee. Keep your eyes on the road.

You pulled your hand away and I leaned toward the window, scrolling on Instagram until my eyes glazed over. My feed populated with blonde women in pale pink outfits with toddlers glued to their hips offering tips and tricks to new mothers. The algorithm clocked my unceasing longing to be a mother even if my body wouldn’t, couldn’t comply.

You drummed your fingers on the steering wheel, never good with silence. Oh, I got one, you said, whipping around a truck. What happened to the man who forgot to wear glasses on the day of the eclipse? You waited for me to respond.

I felt you counting to five in your head before revealing the punchline. He was blinded by his mistake.

Get it? Blinded?

It would have been so easy to laugh, to crack a half-moon smile. Can you please pull over, I said instead. I need to change my tampon like right now.

Can’t it wait? Your hands curl over the steering wheel. We’re almost there. And the eclipse is only like five minutes.

I’m not trying to get toxic shock syndrome.

I waited for you to make a joke. Something about going with the flow or seeing red. But suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. Because I was on my period—again. Because the tiny fund we’d set aside for IVF felt like a child’s piggy bank full of stray couch cushion coins.

You changed lanes, wrenched the car into a plaza just off the highway with a gas station bathroom. Sunlight sliced the asphalt into pieces. Beautiful, boring, suburban. In the idling car next to us, a toddler wailed through a cracked window. His wailing echoing through me even after I retreated into the bathroom, locked the stall, and yanked out my tampon. And when the moon blocked out the sun, birds circled and circled overhead because they knew something was happening even if they didn’t know what.