For Paul

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.

- James Patterson

I don't know where to begin.

The quiet hatred I carry for my fiancé is liquid cement permeating my stomach and intestines, hardening and softening, as he gently smiles and asks me how I'm feeling. My pregnancy was a source of passive aggressive fat jokes, culminating in him telling me I was chubby while he hasn't lost an ounce of the 60lbs he said he would two years ago.

He asked me two weeks after we lost our son if I was recovered enough to help him do chores, as if I was sleeping off a bad cold. As if his existence didn't matter because neither of us held him prior to his passing.

The doctors and attending nurses held him before me.

Crematory and funeral home specialists held him before me.

Postal workers held him before me.

His urn sits in an unopened box next to my fiancé's desk because he knows I'm not ready to acknowledge the loss. He's right, but I don't think he is either.

I created a Facebook marketplace ad for all of my son's clothes and didn't respond to anyone. I watched as the inquiries grew from ten to fifty within a week. His clothes are still in the closet where I washed and organized them over a month ago. I haven't opened that side of the closet since then. It's not lost on me I bought every item of clothing. My emotional labor abacus rapidly clicks, calculating each thing, both big and small, I've done to welcome him into our lives. It serves no one, but I can't stop. It won't bring him back. It won't make my abdomen swell up again with his presence, or bring back the joy I felt for one more chance of holding another baby before I'm 40.

Since then we lie to each other. He asks me how I'm feeling without really wanting to know. I tell him I'm fine when nothing could be further from the truth. The act of masking is draining, but vulnerability met with indifference is worse. Days go by and I wince whenever he touches me. Everything he does feels hallow. His lack of empathy has left me to quietly wither, as if a large part of my heart were inside our son's urn embracing what little remains of his small body. Who else will love him? Who else will remember him if not me?