Work Text:
I have always been told that I am bad at letting things go. Like the old adage goes, an elephant never forgives and never forgets. I have a memory that goes deep to the bones and generations long. And like an elephant, I'm a tender to old bones and ancient griefs. I never let things go, my body will always remember.
How could I ever forget?
The new and painful swell of my breasts, the rise of bile as I smelled foods that I loved, now making be puke.
Did you know they tend to their dead? Elephants. They make graves for their loved ones, pay homage to the dead. Trunks stroke still tusks and arrange ribs, and it is an act so so profound and full of love. And I have come to know it so well these last years. We never forget.
The ache of hips widening, hormones shifting and every benchmark a step closer to a forbidden hope I'd locked away after my second.
Yesterday, I was eight weeks pregnant.
My baby died 2 weeks earlier.
And even as i could see it on the ultrasound, clear and perfect, their little bean shape, button perfect and too small, too still, my body could not let them go
My body is a graveyard, and last night, before my baby left the only safety I could give them, I tended those bones. Hand below my belly button, I whispered into the night: "you are loved. You are perfect. You are so wanted my precious baby."
Yesterday I was 8 weeks pregnant.
Today, I am empty. My body tried so, so hard to hold on to them, the only way I will ever get to hold them, and it was not enough. Today, I am cramping and spasming around what used to be, no longer what is. My breasts aren't sore, I don't have the passionate drive for pickles I'd had just the day before.
My eyelids are swollen from tears, my throat rough from the breathing tube and screaming. The sore is not the sore of growing things I'd come to cherish. Eight weeks of inching towards incandescent hope. One day to see them in my own body and know I would never get to hold them in my arms. Meet them. But my God, were they so loved.
I cannot forget.
I tend my bones and bury those that I've made with my own love.
Yesterday, I was eight weeks pregnant.
Today, I sit with my graveyard body and a grief that robs me of breath.
Today, I wish I could look at a baby, a pregnant person and not feel abject misery and a burning jealousy.
Today, I wish I could have held those bones, alive and well, chubby. What I wouldn't give to be sleepless and hurting for bringing a life into the world.
I wish so much.
Amazing, the things we hold onto.