Posts tagged miscarriage
Show Me A Still Heart

A woman appearing before you desperately frightened by the usual gesticulations, the kicks and rolls inside of her becoming suddenly still, by the warm trickle down her leg, fluid or blood but too soon, too soon. What if you took her by the hand and walked her to a room much like a bedroom, with bleached sheets and pillow cases, bassinet and muslin blankets, with warm light coming through a southern window but stark for its waxed floors where blood pooled at your feet just last week, now a shadow upon which you sometimes slip for the mercilessness of memory? Merciless because this isn’t the first time and, by the wickedness of fate, it will never be the last.

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The Passage

My friend came over and we slowly drank wine and talked—her miscarriage (a couple years earlier), my miscarriage (current), the moments that blindsided each of us in a wash of grief, what the aftermath was like for her and what getting pregnant again was like. I was smack dab in the middle of my experience and found comfort in talking to friends who had been there and who had now had time to assimilate it within a zoomed-out picture of The Rest of Life.

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Finally, A Truth

The two-seater Toyota truck rushed through the darkness of early morning in Fayetteville, N.C. We were on our way to the hospital on Fort Bragg’s Army base. My pain made sitting up monumental, whimpering inevitable. I was aware of every centimeter of my body and yet, somehow, also entirely outside of myself. God, it hurt.

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The Yarn is the Same

(Sometimes I forget).

I have a body. I remind myself stretching, the pops releasing my back before climbing into bed. I roll my wrists, tiny muscles spent from crocheting. We’re working on our relationship, my body and me. I’m working to listen better; my body, in turn, agrees to shout less. I’m trying to forgive the things it will not do, the question mark of grief that whispers, “I can’t.”

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May Day May Day

May 18, 1980 – Mt. St Helens volcano in Washington State exploded with the force of 500 nuclear Hiroshima bombs, taking lives, destroying homes, spreading 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles, and flattening trees for 220 square miles. It was the worst avalanche in U.S. history. Within two weeks ash had drifted around the globe.

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I Became A Mother, But Not the Way I Hoped

I’m a mother. And yet, I’m not.

My dream, years in the making, has and yet hasn’t come true. And even if I could ignore this and live as if my life is the way I want it to be, there are daily reminders everywhere I go that women the world over keep getting my dream for themselves while I am still left grasping for it.

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