Eleven Eleven

by Micalea Smeltzer

just being held by him healed some pieces inside me that had been broken for a long time.

Devastation is an emotion too mild to describe the way I still feel about them. How I always think about them near what should’ve been their birthday and also when I lost them. I wonder often about who they would’ve been, what they could have become if my body hadn’t betrayed me.

It wasn’t my fault—my inability to get pregnant or stay pregnant—but that doesn’t make the losses easier to cope with.

It’s impossible to be prepared for the anger that comes when one’s body commits such a betrayal, when it refuses to participate in what’s seemingly the m...