In Defense of Denial

Few formal rituals exist
to validate a mother’s loss of her unborn
(XX, XY)—the pain (inside/outside
her body).
 
I have no headstone for mine, no urn engraved
on a mantlepiece—just empty moccasins,
a crib molding in the basement,
 
and 100 Ways to Make a Baby
Laugh, a Christmas gift I’m throwing away,
unable to look at the cherubic face on its cover.
 
Now, my replacement for YouTube's strangers’
ultrasounds = online forums for trying
in the aftermath—
 
a sisterhood  
who’s endured the same or worse
before any so-called “rainbow” latched to their breast,
bounced on a hip,
 
no matter the “baby dust” sprinkled for luck
throughout each discussion thread.  
 
I should be more grateful—
 
for a partner who won’t give up, for doorstep bouquets,
delivery pizza with Sharpie hearts on the box.
Grateful my womb remains
(intact).
 
But.
 
What if the question my gratefulness breeds—
 
of who am I to be so
stricken—
 
means Kübler-Ross was, indeed,
mistaken,
 
grief an ouroboros, the snake that’ll never stop
swallowing its tail?
 
What if my temptation to concede
my Facebook posts = TMI, or that weeping
at the sight of a mother pushing a buggy at the park
means I’m weak,
 
actually = a counterforce
 
—malicious,
in fact—
 
to what’s benign (salubrious, even) about not moving on,
and it’s luring me—
 
if only to spare whoever can’t bear witness
to my tangled hair and muumuus
much longer
 
(myself among that peanut gallery,
at times)—
 
to believe
 
(falsely, I suspect)
 
I must stop protesting my fate
when protesting my fate feels like the only way
I’ll survive?
 
“Yes. Right here,” the OB says at my D&C post-op
when I ask, “Is that my baby?” She puts her finger on the baby
on the screen—
 
I beg,
 
but her office doesn’t have a machine with “the capacity”
to print a photo for me.
 
Or what if I say my baby lived long enough
to curl her fingers into fists, resist mortality’s lid.
 
Does that image—
for those who say, Get your act together,
already—
 
justify the space I take up when I lie the snake down
to rest for a moment,
 
breathe?
 
It’s not my job
to answer those questions here.
 
Pancakes will forever break my heart, forks fallen
into syrup.
 
What remains of my baby hasn’t stopped clinging to me—
she, too, struggles with acceptance
it seems.
 
What more is there to say,
really?
 
It’s January—
our Christmas cactus has bloomed for the first time.
 
Maybe there’s nothing mythical about her,
but maybe it’s okay
 
to have named our baby what we’ve named her,
anyway,
 
her stature so slight she would’ve fit upon an open palm
if we’d had a chance
 
after the curette scooped her out.