1. Something (un)natural happened. After almost twenty long years, I still want answers.
  2. I think I spent the first decade in denial. The first decade I spent raising other children.
  3. But around 2013, when I first moved to Las Vegas, I wanted to remember. I wanted to remember better, and more. I wanted to have more than just a postmortem photograph.
  4. My mind is a memory, a movie, a way of moving through the world without my body. My body betrayed me. My body let my baby’s body die. My body does not belong to me.
  5. My son’s body is ash, scattered at sea. His father took him, carried him, as I had done for ten months of gestation, to his final destination. His destination should’ve been my arms.
  6. For years I turned away from my husband in bed so I could wrap my own arms around my own body, pretending my son was cradled within. I didn’t want my husband to know.
  7. That cradle was my heart, my home; his heart, his home. We lived there, unbeknownst.
  8. No one knew him, except me. I knew him, inside of me. He moved, and then he didn’t. Others didn’t know, until I asked them to bring their stethoscopes, their belly monitors. The prickly slide of velcro, the slick smear of ultrasound gel—his heart barely beating.
  9. No one could touch him, except me.
  10. I touched my boy and his ten toes brought me the best and worst kind of joy—the kind that couldn’t last beyond a stolen moment. His fingers would not wrap around my own.
  11. I remember: Blue skin, purple lips, burgundy umbilical cord. Blue hospital nightgown. Because there had been no time to pack his own clothes.
  12. I tried to cry and the nurse said, “Are you crying?” I couldn’t cry. Because I couldn’t cry.
  13. We declined the autopsy and opted for quick cremation. We had a service at the church, but no reception. We wanted to be alone in our little red-brick house on the military base.
  14. But now I must wonder: Was it gestational diabetes? Was it untreated hypothyroidism?
  15. Should I have known? Should I have trusted modern medicine, and not the cult-based practices of my family? Was I raised to be willfully ignorant of the miracle of science?
  16. My father said take kelp tablets, take iodine, take iodized salt—take anything, anything, except synthetic hormone pills produced and promoted by the medical establishment.
  17. Except synthetic thyroid hormone (aka Synthroid) is much more stable than that which can be gleaned from pigs or cows. I did not want to become part pig or part cow. I was barely human, and I needed to hold on to my humanity.
  18. But maybe I backtrack. Maybe I backtrack back to the farm, where I learned my cultism. Where I learned to milk goats and ride horses, and the idyllic nature of my fauna friends lulled me into a type of (un)happiness that could not be questioned. I was there to obey.
  19. And so when, even in my early twenties, my father said to never take Synthroid, I didn’t.
  20. I trusted. Essentially, I did nothing. I pretended I didn’t have an autoimmune disorder.
  21. And that’s on me, no matter what my father said to do or not to do. That’s all—on me.
  22. And plus, it could’ve been undetected/undiagnosed gestational diabetes instead. Later, when my urine revealed elevated protein levels during my third and final pregnancy:
  23. I told my mother. She said, “Oh yeah, I had that with all four of you.” Meaning, diabetes. And she’d never told me. Nowhere had such appeared in my formal medical histories. Nowhen had I known my mother had “high-risk” or “difficult” pregnancies with us.
  24. What I want to say is—if you think it’s your fault, it’s your fault. That won’t change.
  25. I add this last line, looking to the further future. Looking five years beyond my baby boy’s would-be age of twenty. In that year, he could have rented a car to come visit me. He could’ve driven across the desert, post-college and early-career, to see his mother.

Court Harler (she/her) is a queer writer, editor, and educator based in Northern Kentucky. She holds an MA and an MFA. She’s owner of Harler Literary LLC, founder and editor of Flash the Court, and former editor in chief of CRAFT Literary Magazine. Her award-winning, multigenre work has been published around the world. Learn more at harlerliterary.llc or flashthecourt.com. Find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler. Flash the Court