I need more hours. I need to do things. I haven't. I get some things done each day. I have had another birthday, it's past now. Your sister's is next. She will be nine. I need more hours with her while she is little. I've been longing for those days again. When I took her to story-time. When I could carry her for hours. When she would make up her own language. I wish I could dream of you. Every night if I could dream that you were living, I would watch you grow each night. You would be walking now if I would have started those dreams last year. I should have made my brain do that. bring you to life at night in my head. If only I had that control. I cried today and went outside, away from others, to call your daddy. I talked through my tears with him and played with pine needles. I looked to my right and looking at me was a baby rabbit. He wasn't so young that he was helpless. He was young enough to be darling and old enough to explore. I would say that he was a toddler bunny. He watched for a bit and I told your dad that he was there. He made my sadness lighten. He inched off toward where he had come from, the barren underside of a dumpster. His softness looked alien to the hard pavement that surrounded him then. But his gentle curiosity took away the harshness. He made things better today just by looking in on me. Just by taking the moment to notice something in someone he should fear. I hope to see him again. Or maybe we should keep it how it was. I'll let him decide. Night, night Frost mama loves you

Beechwood Eyes

I haven't been here. I've been afraid to be here. Afraid to tell you the things I've been thinking about. I've been crying so much lately because the thoughts are so hard to take. Time is pushing me into something that I don't know if I'm ready for. I hope that I can be. I wonder about your thoughts of me everyday. I wonder, when I die, will you be waiting for me to tell me what I did wrong? What I did to keep you from living? Or will you be happy that you didn't have to live here, where troubles and worries seem to outweigh joy and ease. Here with me is not always happy, I feel like I've let the suffering in and it likes it here. It wants to stick around, to share rooms and days with me. I know what I have that is good, your sister is my treasure, I try to keep these feelings from her so that I don't bring her down. But I know that she is privy to my sadness. When she was three months old and my father died I sobbed as I nursed her, she let go of my breast and looked up to me and reached her infant fingers to my face. Her eyes showed such understanding and care, she seemed much older at that moment. Ever after that moment I have found myself looking into her deep eyes for the reflection of those things I have lost. For years I tried to find the shadow of my Dad's face there. Now, of course, I search for the delicate curve of a baby. You, that I have lost, and the questions I have about myself lie there in her eyes. It's ironic that one of my greatest pleasures has become so wide open to my pain. She has a tender heart, a beating heart, Frost. Right before we discovered that we had lost you the monitor found a heart beat, and I felt a moment of relief. It was my own heartbeat, not yours. I would trade it for you. That is a question I have to answer. Would I trade it for a new baby? Would I risk leaving my living child, whose eyes have grown around me, so that a new one could be where you were to grow. Or what if someone else had to go so that another could come. People said that when your grandpa died and your sister was born. They said "they say that when someone in the family is born, another must die". Those words broke my heart, they also stayed with me and made me fearful of the future. I guess, from what I know, I always feel like there has to be some sort of trade in life for something good. A bad has to happen. That is what I feel. I haven't had so many goods in a row that I don't worry about the bad. I'm scared, sweet baby, everyday I am scared. I've been gardening to take myself away from the troubles. We are going to plant a tree for you soon. We are waiting for it. I want to watch it grow and become a peace for us. If it thrives, perhaps I will become brave. Night, night Frost Mama loves you