I had intended for my return to public writing to be prompted by happier circumstance, one heralding the arrival of a new life. Instead, it is the loss of that life which brings me once again to the place where I feel as though this story needs telling. That perhaps in the telling of this story, someone will feel uplifted as I have so often felt uplifted through a story shared with me.

I’m still recovering from the surgery I had two days ago, I believe I’ll be recovering for the rest of my life. Never fully adjusting to such a loss, but how could I possibly? It is far too great a sorrow to fully overcome. Integrate, process, yes, but never overcome.

Keeping busy seems to be about all I can manage to do, buzzing about my house tending to all the little loose ends that managed to constantly escape me. Until now. Things I’ve been putting off for months, suddenly accomplished in a single day. Many such tasks were addressed today, along with all the laundry and a rather thorough cleaning of my bedroom. I even made a weaving. We also ran errands, and managed to purchase a globe, simply because we didn’t have one and I felt as though maybe we should.

Seventeen weeks is an awfully long time to live with another being inside your body, it’s hard not to become attached to the subtle ways in which the curvature of my being began to accommodate for the extra passenger. It’s shocking how quickly my body has remembered its shape from before I became pregnant, my belly already startlingly flat where once a sizable bump protruded from my abdomen. This was the most pregnant I’d ever been at this stage of pregnancy, I said often. And it was true.

So pregnant. And now, so not pregnant, with nothing but the tiniest set of footprints of a baby I’ll never know.

What a strange time.