Every day, women find out they’re pregnant. Within five seconds, they learn they’re a mother. And every day, women have those babies. They’re beautiful and perfect and they weigh 7 pounds, 21 ounces, and everything is wonderful and painful and so many emotions at once.

But also, every day, women lose babies. They lose them at birth. They lose them a few minutes after. Many—too many (25% in fact)—lose them in the womb. They lose them at 5 weeks, or 8 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 4 months. And no matter when the loss occurs, it’s devastating. It takes a part of you to whatever lies beyond this life. Still, pieces remain:

Grievances

The one who occupied my body

screamed to leave before it was ready—

left me wan and wanting for something I never

wanted to begin with. One by one doctors wrote

on clipboards and asked the same thing:

what brings you in today

M took over said she’s pregnant in pain bleeding

not right how many months was she “was” they said,

was two and too early to tell loved ones they say wait

until second trimester the risks of complication are too common

and for what, exactly? why conceal the suffering?

At each visit I was checked in with the same questions

always the one I didn’t know how to answer do you feel safe at home

yes, I said, voice hoarse from crying thinking

how could I feel safe when my own body unmothered itself

it’s normal to take on blame, the nurse said, sensing my guilt

and I silent, nodding how the fuck do you know

I didn’t say.

It took fifteen days and four hospital trips and then

found an 8cm block of tissue stuck in my cervix keeping

me open until infection set in

M made a terrible joke said it’ll never let go, jack

For weeks I sat in a hospital bed on drugs

while doctors tried everything to figure out why

I was still in pain. how can people let themselves

become addicts I used to think and now months later

when I still crave that once sedated space understand

they gave me morphine and dilaudid and fentanyl and

percocet and lortab and everything else

why didn’t they do a D&C, a doctor finally asked me

saying everything should have flushed out by now

but things did flush I bled for days and days and passed

a softball sized clot felt there it is and took a picture

with my phone to save as my own ultrasound photo because

nothing ever appeared on any screen even though hCG levels said

I was clearly pregnant and rising until of course they didn’t

Now, it’s been months and this grief plagues me I’ve never

been so upset to see pregnant women on the subway the other day

while riding the A sat across a woman rubbing her belly

and I was reading an article in the NYTimes

that said women retain cells of the baby

even when the baby is gone called it

fetal souvenirs said the cells live inside

the mothers brain and heart from day one

of conception like I need science to tell me

(Original Poem by Hillary Ferguson, 2016)