Between Bruises and Blooms

Originally written on December 1, 2015.

Tonight,
sleep refuses to find me.

The house is quiet,
except for the steady rhythm
of my son’s breathing
as he dreams
without knowing
I’m counting the hours.

I watch Emerson,
safe in his bed,
and gratitude fills one half of my heart.

The other half
still belongs to you.

I look at your photographs
and wonder
how someone so deeply loved
could leave behind
a silence this loud.

Some nights,
missing you
is heavier than sleep.

So I close my eyes
and chase the pieces of you.

Your cry.

The softness of your skin.

The wisps of newborn hair
against my fingertips.

The sweet scent
only a brand-new baby carries.

I reach for those memories
like they’re drifting smoke.

And they slip through me.

I only had seven hours.

Seven precious,
heartbreaking hours.

How can forever
fit inside seven hours,
yet the smallest details
already feel so far away?

That frightens me
more than I know how to say.

Today,
your big brother
searched for you again.

Blanket in his tiny hands,
he stood beneath your picture
and whispered the only word
his little heart knew.

“Sis.”

He cried.

He buried his face against me,
looking for someone
who couldn’t come back.

Only sixteen months old,
yet somehow
he already understands
that someone can be here…

and then gone.

One day,
I’ll have to tell him your story.

I’ll tell him
how deeply you were loved.

How fiercely you are missed.

How you changed us
in just seven hours.

Tonight,
I watch one child sleeping.

I trace another
through fading memories.

And I grieve
in the quiet way
only a mother
missing her daughter
ever truly can.