Ribbons
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i do know that christmas bows are beautiful
wherever they are laid
and that she is eternal
whatever season it may be
Losing my religion
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It’s terrifying to live this way, to have your faith and naiveté crushed in one violent instant. To be truly certain, deep in your bones, that nothing can protect you. That tragedy can strike any one of us at any second. But maybe it’s liberating, too. Because if you believe that you can ensure you own good luck by praying, or eating salads, or surrounding yourself with the right crystals, then it holds that people make their own bad luck, too. It’s scary here on the other side. Most people don’t want to join me, and I don’t blame them. I miss that feeling of comfort and certainty about the future that I used to have. But I can’t go back.
Read MoreOn recordkeeping
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This here is a record. A record in time. December 2, 2019. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one days after I stepped away from that blinking cursor and a soon-to-be past life, one hand on my belly, willing her to move. I cue up the interview recording again. A moment where we are both laughing raucously at something only a bereaved mother a certain distance out can laugh at. And then we are serious again. We say his name. We say her name. We’re creating a record, carrying it forward, together.
Read MoreTransported
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The last night I am with him, we crowd onto his narrow hospital bed. I spend hours touching and memorizing his face, his hands, his toes. We relish these memories, as impossible as they are. They are the only connection between our babies and us, their parents—a nightmare and a life preserver all at the same time.
Read MoreThe presence of another's heart
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Jesús never wanted to bring us sadness. Like any child, he wanted to be loved and celebrated for who he was. After those first aching months, my heart recalibrated. It is a different heart from the one I had before him. Perhaps it is more reluctant to hope for things, sometimes more fearful for the future. And yet it’s a heart that knows love can be found in even the darkest of places.
Read MoreThe meatbag
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At first the bag is thin—only a membrane, really. You go home from the hospital clutching it in your bloodied hands, gasping at each stinging slice as the glass shifts and stabs with every pulse of your new sack-heart. The pain is astonishing in its intensity. It literally hurts to breathe. It hurts just to exist. And you wonder: how am I ever going to survive like this? How does anyone live with a tender heart filled with razors of glass?
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