empty

My fingers mindlessly type in the same web addresses over and over,
even though nothing has changed.
There are no new messages.
Things are just as they were five minutes ago.
But still, I go through these motions over and over.
I am avoiding something.

It is the void that threatens to creep over me
and swallow me whole.

If I just go sit down, I will be alone with my grief.
Will I be able to handle it?
If I really, really think about what this means,
what will happen to me?

There is one person who I dread seeing, and I feel sorry for her because some part of me hates her, or envies her--I don't know which. She is the person who had the same due date as me. I know her husband and I imagined her and I running into each other in the next few weeks, giggling, comparing stories.

And now, panic creeps in.
Will I see her at an art opening?
A tiny bump poking through her
thin frame.
My body a gaping hole where a baby
should be.
I should look like her.

My husband said to me today that it's time I start exercising. I felt my heart sink.  "I just don't want you to start feeling bad about yourself."

or about this body
that still looks maternal.
This body that took in
nourishment and had to
put it in different places
because the baby inside of me
had already died.
even though I didn't know.
or did I?

I remember the day quite clearly.  The sun was shining for the first time in a long time. I slept in and realized I did not wake up starving or nauseous.  I pushed those feeling aside and tried to rejoice at the fact that I was not some hunger crazed pregnant woman screaming at my husband to make my breakfast before I threw up.

But the feeling would not go away.
My baby has died, I said to myself.
I dialed the number of my doctor
who had attended the homebirth
of my daughter over 3 years ago.

"Please talk me down from my tree," I pleaded.  And she did. But when people asked me how my morning sickness was, I would say, "it's better, but I keep thinking my baby died. I hate what pregnancy hormones do to me!"

Reading through my pregnancy books, my eyes were drawn to the sections about bleeding and miscarriage. "Stop," I told myself, "you're going to cause your own miscarriage with these bad thoughts."

Nearly 5 weeks later, I awoke from a very vivid dream. In the dream, I was in a jet plane, seated behind the pilot as we were about to take off. After taxing on the runway for what seemed an absurd amount of time, we finally were going to take off, or so I thought. The pilot carefully steered us onto the interstate.  My fingers gripped my seat and we nearly avoided disaster as the huge body of the plane drove on a road much to small to accommodate it.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
"What are you doing?" I asked the pilot.
"I thought this was the way you wanted me to take," he replied matter of factly.
"NO!" I insisted, "I want you to FLY!"

After being jolted awake by my bold expression to the pilot, I went to the bathroom, only to be shocked by the bright red blood stain on my white underwear.

I wanted to pull up my pants, go back to sleep
and pretend that this wasn't happening.
Instead, I walked into my daughter's bedroom
where my husband was sleeping.
"Honey, wake up," I said with a shaky voice
as reality started to carefully creep over me.
The intuition that had tried to communicate
with me for over 5 weeks could not be
quieted.

I knew at that moment
that I could not go back to bed.
That my life was never going to be the same.