Read my flash fiction, Morning After.
The morning after you lost your baby was the hardest morning of your life. Imagine carrying it around for six months, singing to it, buying clothes, dreaming up moments of first grasp, first word and first step, only to have it arrive too early. Dead.
“She’s a traveler like you, love. She wants to see the world and simply couldn’t wait,” Jacob said as he stood beside the hospital bed where I lied. Rose was a bundle of cloths and cold flesh in my arms.
Jacob kissed my forehead and put one hand on my shoulder. We wanted to take a picture. Just one, so that Rose could at least live on in the pixels and colors of our phone. Maybe we would print it out and frame it too.
The morning after was the hardest because that’s when we had the funeral. Her coffin was barely an arm’s length and looked out of place in the tiny hole we dug. Babies weren’t supposed to come out dead, I thought. This was all wrong.
The procession was small, consisting only of me, Jacob, my parents, his parents and his brother Nick. Rose hadn’t lived long enough to anyone else except us.
For the next few years, we stopped trying. Jacob wanted to, but I was scared. I couldn’t bear the thought of almost having a child again and have the ground claim them before they could open their eyes.
“Okay, we don’t have to do it,” Jacob said. “Not unless you’re ready.”
He understood, he always did. That night, we lied next to each other, our breathing silent and teasing.
It was just the two of us in those days. There was a baby-sized hole in our lives and we both knew it, but our longing remained unsaid. It hung in the air, an aftertaste of death.
Until the day Daisy came.
The morning after your baby was born was the happiest day of your life. Just as the loss of a child was nearly unbearable, the birth of a child was also close to unbearable. My heart never felt so full; it was a feeling of love unlike anything else.
Daisy was a healthy girl, 3.1 kg of joy and 51 cm of hope.
When she came out crying, Jacob cried too. It took me a few minutes, but then the nurse put her in my arms, and for a moment the entire world stopped. There was just me and the baby. And this time, the baby was warm. She was moving her tiny arms.
I choked back tears.
“She’s perfect,” I whispered. My lips blossomed into a smile. Here was the flower that our lives were missing.
Jacob smiled too, and he touched a finger to Daisy’s cheek, “You’re perfect.”
Hey guys, thank you for stopping by! This was written for an online ‘flash fiction month’ on Deviantart. If you enjoyed this, read my latest flash fiction called The Harbinger.