Sometimes it feels like we disappeared her. When M was born, poof! she was gone again, gone differently than the first time, a goneness that sometimes feels more painful, more violent than the cause of her first goneness, her death.

Before M, it was so obvious that she was missing. Before M, everything that happened to our family should have happened to her, with her, too. I saw her always – or saw her absence always – running in the grass with E, sisters playing in the tub together, braiding two girls’ hair and snuggling two girls in bed. Immediately after M, I was disoriented by a second loss of her. Because to my mind, she and he could never be here together and he was incontrovertibly here, so she was incontrovertibly gone. They could never have existed, alive, together, so which one would I choose? Which one would I…