Your body left mine on the new moon. One month ago, today.
I pick up Arjan from daycare and head home on a dusty road in Morongo Valley as he
falls asleep in the back seat. The cholla cactus glistens in the summer heat; its needles
look like stars. I feel sunbaked. The air conditioning blasts. Tears start falling. I pull over
on the side of the road.

I’ve been pushing it away.
This ache.
It feels like a hot, rotten apple in my stomach, a clamp on my throat. A longing. An
emptiness that feels drier than this desert.
Yesterday, we put the bassinet away into storage.
I canceled the midwife.
December 4, 2024. I took the due date off my calendar.
Last night, your Papa played the piano, and I could hear the music coming through the
walls. He was playing for you.
Grandpa left yellow roses, cut from our garden, on the credenza. He left them for you.

Back home, I nurse Arjan in his room, curtains drawn against the afternoon heat. We
settle into the womb-like darkness, listening to the wind chimes. I can feel my heart
asking me to somehow hold, in this moment, both the beautiful life at my breast and the
raw ache of death.
“This is Mother,” I whisper to myself as I rock my baby.
I lay him down for a nap in his new toddler bed and walk outside into the garden.
I yearn to smell you; instead, I smell the baby pink roses that bask in the nal moments of
their bloom.
I long to hold you; instead, I rub my ngers through the fuchsia bougainvillea vine as she
raises her arms toward the sky.
And as I long to hear your voice, you speak so softly into my heart:
“Make love, Mama. Make beauty.”