A Wedding Invitation

 I stumbled on her name while scrolling insta.

“Grace Elizabeth” 

printed on a stranger’s wedding announcement.

That’s my daughter’s name.

“Nobody else is ever gonna see Gracie girl.”

Every once in awhile I want to open the box

That holds the only thing we have of you.

Not the actual box though. 

That is a weight I still can’t bear. 

I mean, every once in awhile I want to remember you. 

But the idea alone buckles my knees. 

You would be almost 9 years old. 

Nine. 

Close to a decade. 

I dream of you. 

You’d be the most like Jonas I think. 

Lean and brown, 

loving being outside and swimming. 

Asking Papa to take you fishing, 

asking your Dad for any whim that crosses your mind, 

testing me with a look I gave others my whole childhood.

I thought I’d miss you less by now. 

I can say your name without falling apart. 

I can tell others I carried a little girl once with out crying. 

I can let your brothers talk about what they think you would have been like. 

But I can not remember how you left us. 

How I had you ripped away from me. 

How I only had pieces of you to bury in a box in a field. 

Maybe I need another decade to pass.

Oh Gracie girl, I ache for you to be here. Still. Almost ten years later.

Still Aching

It’s been a lot of years. But that day, those hours, are still as fresh as yesterday. You’d be 8 now. The same as Emma, who I can’t see without aching.

I still can’t visit Richmond. The heating pad we bought to ease my cramps the night before makes me nauseous every time your brothers pull it out for ear aches.

Oh Gracie girl you’d love your brothers. And your dad. And the dogs and the cat and crossing the field between us and papa and nana. You’d be in my class at cc and be friends with sweet girls named Samara and Naomi. You’d be crushing the courts with your skills and perfect form, and swimming fast and far every summer. 

I still see you in my dreams and feel I’m one kid short when we load up after summer days at amusements parks. I ache for Heaven and Jesus and you sweet girl. I wish you were with me as I ride the tide of boy hormones and filth. I wish the hole you left would fill in and let me forget a little of the way you moved to your brothers cacophony, and I wish that you were in you your dad’s arms in pictures, (he’s amazing and you’d both adore each other,) and that your feet filled the muck boots handed down to wade in creeks and snow, and amble through the woods. I wish Henry the hound slept beside your bed and Rosie the magnificent walked by your side like Aslan. 

I wish you were here right now, tucked in your bed after listening to Harry Potter and sleeping under LED lights permanently on because someone lost the remote to turn them off. I wish your feet were part of the thunderous stomps of your brothers dancing and rocking out to 21 pilots and terrible YouTube artists. I wish you were here to play Minecraft and Fortnite -and Upward basketball. 

I wish I didn’t stay awake at night feeling like someone isn’t home yet, that the porch light needs to stay on a little longer as I fight sleep until everyone is home and safe and snugly tucked in. 

I wish you were here Gracie girl. You live in my dreams and post wine slumbers, when I’m not awake and not asleep and not sure why I feel like someone’s missing.