You.
The other mommies of babies
fallen from life
banged mercilessly on the pavement
of our wombs
and broken.
You
you held your baby
lifeless
but you held him.
you held her.
You took pictures.
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
your Facebook status—
you beg us to remember.
I understand this.
These little souls no one knows.
No one connected to,
no one will remember.
No one cares.
But we feel the fluttering.
We feel it in our hearts,
that desperate gaping—
and in our bellies.
You want us to know: your baby.
You, mother.
Soul vanquished.
Soul rent in two.
The weeping, the never was,
the forever is.
And so you post pictures
of the baby
you held
dead.
But we—
we are the mothers who flushed our children into toilets.
We are the mothers who tried and tried to grasp
to hold
our baby
our dead baby.
But ours was too small.
Fishing through mountains of gore
pieces
was that my baby?
is this my baby?
In silence. Alone. Torn with pain,
solitude, anguish, bleeding.
Grasping at something—
this might have been the baby.
Flush it down.
How?
Is this what mothers do?
You held your baby.
You ***** a memorial, maybe even a burial.
Or ashes.
We are the mothers who hold out ****** hands
in silence
and babies lost somewhere in the septic system.
Should we take a picture?
Do you want to hear our story?
On this day of infant loss remembrance,
do you want to hear how we caught
the amniotic sac
and held it up to the light
hoping
and terrified.
What if we saw the body?
What could we do?
There are no hospital or nurses in our bathroom.
No cameras.
No burials.
Only blood, blood everywhere—
and the toilet.
And the sac, if we find it—
it might burst.
And then our baby might go out with the mopwater
or lie unnoticed on the ceiling.
Somehow we lost our baby.
We can't find it.
I wish I could have held my baby,
given it a name.
But I lost it.
Weep with me, too.
