"there was a current and then there was Nothing."

On the drive home from the first bad appointment, I lean my head back and cry into my own mouth. I tell you that I can’t bear to know our kiddo is struggling and failing right inside of me. The safest house on earth, right?, and I can’t do anything to recover it or reassure it to fight. I just carry it around, talking to it, and begging it not to fade away. Please don’t give up, I say every hour. Until it’s clear it will. It must. And now: We wait for it to still completely and leave me and I am burned to the ground in grief by the mere idea of being so full and then, suddenly, so empty. Here is what I keep trying to explain to my mother with her soft hands and to you, as you cry with your head bent into my back: There was a current of utter magic inside of me, and then there was Nothing. 

We have waited so long for you, dear. Since we found out you were you, and that you had finally made it here, every night for weeks I yelled at God to protect you. I demanded it of him. Don’t let there be a world in which you arrive and depart before we can actually know you. In which you are not our family but a comet and I am left running after you, grabbing at the elusive tail of you. 

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Even now, when we see your heart through the outer space of ultrasound, which started so slow and then rose and fought and now, drags back down to an uneven, occasional thump, I think: Don’t leave me. Can’t there be a way in which I don’t have to give you up?

 For days, it is all I can do to not turn my back on the whole world. I love all of you and I hate all of you and I begrudge you so fiercely. So sincerely. The coldest, smallest heart of me clenches up my fists like walnuts and rages at your good luck. At your abundance and your casualness. For days, I scorn your happiness and snarl at your complaints. What do you know of grief, I scream to you from the balcony of this harshest, bluest night we just can’t seem to pull ourselves through. This night in which I am lost, wild and shrieking for this child I won’t ever find.

- been thinking...
There are no words for when one of your most beloved friends writes something like this. Or when her husband writes something like this. Nothing to do but cry big, fat, ploppy tears throughout the night and long into the day, your heart broken in half for two of the very best people you know.