Flutters

The sun is setting.  It is time.

I strike the match.  I light the flame.

I cry.

I need to light the other candles now.  The ones to bring in Shabbat. And pray for my family; my husband and my children…all my children…

So I strike another match.

I light one…two…three…four candles.

Four candles to represent my family…

Plus the one on the counter…the one that will burn all night…and all day…to represent the child we buried…

Five candles.

I set the table…one…two…three…four plates…and look over at the candle again.

We take our seats.

We eat.

We talk.

We look at the candle.

We tuck the kids in…one…two…beautiful, healthy children…and the candle still burns…

We slip under our covers.

He falls asleep.

And I start to feel…those flutters…

I stare at the ceiling.  I try not to go there, but my hands are already resting on my stomach, pressing down to find the flutters, to release them, and I am trying not to imagine, but the images are too powerful, and they flood my mind.

I am cutting through my body…

digging…

hands soaked with the blood of my child…

and I am desperate to find the beating heart I feel within me…

and hold it…

and protect it…

but no matter how much I dig…

how much I search…

I cannot find it…

and all I can do…

is lay here…

in a pool of pain…

and feel…

fluttering…

deep inside me…

where I cannot reach.

Later, I tell my husband, cautiously because I don’t think this is normal…

..how I have been feeling our child move inside me…

for eight years…

every single night…

and he reminds me…

how people can feel a limb that’s been amputated…

and I suddenly have the words to describe the phantom flutters of my phantom child…

and I cry…

and cry…

and cry.