reframing femininity
I started to lose you on Christmas Day. Never have I experienced such agony as my worst fear unfolded into reality. I didn’t understand what miscarriage could be—the intensity of the physical process; bodily desperation as my reaching arms tried to hold on, tried to save my child who is already gone; the depth of…
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We wore bright, colorful hues to my daughters’ funeral—my husband in a soft pink button-down, me in a periwinkle dress that danced with pink and yellow flowers. My heart wore sackcloth and ashes. Somehow, it was the only thing to do. Although we had never endured a depth of grief so deep and dark and…
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I remember using a black felt tip marker, writing the words, “baby due” and circling March 9th on the calendar that lay by the phone on our kitchen counter. There is nothing quite like the first time you see those two pink lines.
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Standing in the florescent glow of Super Target it happened. A throng of ponytailed and legging-clad mothers had just dropped little ones at school and entered the store, eager for a cathartic wander through the aisles, me included. I turned toward Starbucks to get my morning Chai when I happened to glance at the cart…
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“Elephants,” I thought. “No, it was a whale.” I read about her a few months ago. Her sweet baby had died and she glided through the ocean with a small body on her back, unable to let go. Her whole pod surrounded her as she carried her lifeless child for 17 days. I like to think that…
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The arms of my oversized chocolate brown chair hold my tired body as I bring the face of my discontented daughter towards me. Her quivering lips latch on and her squawks slow to a grave whimper as she suckles the milk from my breast with a sweet hum of contentment. Oxytocin forges through my body…
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March 17, 2016 Dear Come Back Kid,
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I woke up this morning to my husband’s phone buzzing wildly with incoming texts.
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My Grandmother died on Good Friday the year I turned ten.
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The upturned soil left a bare spot on the landscape, a tiny mound underneath the pine trees where a small aluminum marker vibrated in the cold winter wind.
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