Your Next Miscarriage

This was the plan before the good news became bad news: You would pack your bags and leave them in the car. You would drive down to Omaha after the ultrasound. You were traveling to visit friends, to see a total eclipse, though your real reason for going was to share the good news.

But then the heart stopped beating, like a light switched off. And when you cried together in the clinic parking lot, you asked one another what to do: stay home and grieve in bed, or go to Nebraska and be among friends? There was no right choice. You repeated this to one another like a promise.

You also promised, while in the car headed to Omaha, that when you arrived, you would tell your friends the truth. “Don’t hide your grief. Don’t pretend these things never happen,” you told each other. But when you walk into that warm house, where they offer you a drink, the bad news hardens and sinks inside of you and you cover it with a smile for the next three days. You gather on patios to drink and catch up, a music festival playing in the distance, the taste of alcohol twisting the knife. While one of you