Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss Read Online Free PDF

don’t want to catch Jill’s attention because I don’t want to be forced to smile in such close proximity to that little girl—the “should be Isaiah’s age” little girl. Instead, I walk down the opposite sidewalk quickly with a cursory sideways smile to dodge her mother whilestaring at that girl from across the street. She’s Asian and, I assume, is smaller than my little boy would be, but she seems SO BIG! Is that what almost-five looks like? She rides a big girl bike down the road and looks after her little brother.
    Isaiah should be watching after Paige and Quinn. Isaiah is invisible on our family walk as we pass the people I try to avoid. He’s with us, but invisible. On our perfect family walk, I see him on his bike laughing with his toddling sister, Paige, who is looking oh-so-sassy in her shades, bright-colored clothes, and curly pigtails; just as I saw him at the birthday party last Saturday excitedly hovering over the gifts right next to that tall blond girl with bouncy curls.
    He’s not lost; he’s just invisible. Since they—Jill and Cristen’s friend—can’t see him, I don’t feel like talking to them and their children. As I duck into the garage away from an always friendly, but somewhat confused, Jill, I think that she will never see him walking with me.

Dragonflies
    Shannan Fleet
    C ould I ever determine which is harder? Cradling your slack body still wet with birth or being leached of warmth by this pink granite as I press my face against your flat grave marker. Your indelible name, written out in rhythmic gouges pounded across stone, cutting into my cheek. My shirt soaks up the water from last night’s rain as I settle in six feet above you. My fingers constrict, closing on fistfuls of grass. I’m too numb to startle as a dragonfly alights on the back of my hand, tickling me with an iridescent flutter of wings.

    It was an unusually hot spring, and the heat made your big sister fussy as I struggled to situate her in her canopied raft. But soon we relaxed into the cool water, delighting in the relief. She giggled with glee as I bobbed in and out of the water playing peek-a-boo over the side of the raft. I dove under her and rolled over so that I could tickle her pudgy, pruned toes. I felt you roll too, as if you were trying to snatch at those same toes! Were you trying to play? I surfaced behind your sister, laughing and clutching my swelling belly, thrilled by the flutter of first kicks.

    On the road near the cemetery, engines drone ceaselessly, a steady stream of cars pass by mere feet from our visit. The ever-changing but constant presence of strangers increases my loneliness. I should be holding your tiny hand instead of blades of grass. My eyes dart about as I catch flashes of metallic blues and greens in the periphery. I feel susurrous movements in my hair, a gentle tug here and there, tangles forming; I am somehow sure the dragonflies are beginning to ravel up in there. I look and see that the first dragonfly never left me, still brushing my hand with opalescent kisses.

    Your sister, your Da, and I all went to see you. The ultrasound technician entered the room all warm smiles and cool jelly, and there you were! Emerging from mists of visual static, my beautiful daughter. But we had no chance to celebrate you; two doctors came in all whispers and pointing. I perched on the edge of the bed, every muscle taut with anticipation. Did my mounting dread frighten you as my cortisol coursed through our binding cord? As the doctors spoke of abnormalities, perinatologists, trisomy 18, and “options,” you devolved from my “baby girl” to “the fetus.”
    I drove us home as the bright-white light of the sun drained the color from the world around me and my mind buzzed with the beating of a million insect wings.

    I hear the keening before I realize the sound is coming from me. I want to scream the earth open, tearing back turf and soil, rending a hole—a way to you—and letting the