You smiled through baby showers.
You brought gifts.
Played the games.
Laughed when you were supposed to.
Clapped when names were revealed,
when tiny socks were unwrapped
like promises no one ever doubted would be kept.

You smiled.
Because anything else would’ve made the room uncomfortable.

And when they asked how you were doing—
you said “I’m fine.”
Because grief this invisible
feels like a burden to explain.

But your arms ache.

Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Like they were made to hold someone
who never arrived.

Like they know.
Like they remember a weight
that never came to rest in them.

And your body—
your beautiful, battered, aching body—
grieves in a language only you can hear.

Hormones crash like waves.
Dreams you didn’t dare name still wake you up.
You reach for a belly that isn’t full,
for a cry that never came,
for a future that dissolved quietly
while everyone else kept moving.

They don’t see it.
Because nothing’s missing from the outside.
Because you didn’t get to show them
the ultrasound taped to the fridge,
the little shoes you hid in the closet,
the love you poured into empty space
like it could bloom something real.

But you feel it.
Every day.
Every breath.
Every heartbeat that echoes with the memory
of the one you didn’t get to meet.

You didn’t lose a moment.
You lost a whole life.

And no one claps for surviving that.