Zachary was stillborn last summer—it's a simple scientific fact. But in my book, a live and fluttering baby can't simply disappear, particularly one whose elbows and knees I have felt pressed against the inner wall of my taut belly and whose mouth I've seen opening and closing on a fuzzy ultrasound image for eight months. There was another one a few years ago, a male fetus whose heart stopped at fifteen weeks, and that one I can accept. A fetus, fine. But this one? A real six-pound baby? Fuck no. So I use my mind to bring him back when I'm feeling motherly.

Here's what I do while Kevin's off doing manly things around the house, like mowing the yard, or scrutinizing our credit card bill online, wondering who could possibly have spent $106.72 at Whole Foods, because it sure as hell wasn't him. I grab a roll of toilet paper and sneak off into the bedroom, where I lie down on my side and have a good hard cry. Although I revel in those first few minutes in solitude, it's never very long before I send Kevin a telepathic message to come find me. I mean, what's the point of just lying there sobbing with no one to enjoy it with. It's like publishing a blog that nobody reads.

Normally, I'm a fairly loud person, always banging around the kitchen and dropping things and chattering to Kevin about this or that. You won't find me off in a hidden corner with my nose in a book. So when the house is abruptly quiet, Kevin really does notice it. He invariably stops whatever he's doing and makes his way into the bedroom (he somehow just knows I'm there), slides up onto the bed beside me, and drapes his arm across my torso. Now that's a quality man right there.

Through a blurry film of tears, I look up at his face, which to me is absolutely perfect. Symmetrical features. Sandpaper scruff. Dark eyebrows. And his face inevitably morphs into what Zachary's face would like, grown up. Once I get that hurtful image in my head, I can't erase it, so I press my face against Kevin's chest instead and close my eyes. I then attempt to breathe in his scent through the long-sleeve t-shirt he always wears, for he's got that summer boy smell I love—sweaty and salty and outdoorsy and clean. But by that time, of course, both of my nostrils are totally clogged—so I end up sucking down my own snot through my back nasal passage instead.

I then try to imagine that scent, which I can always do with great accuracy and wonder why men's cologne companies can never seem to hit the mark. It's precisely what Zachary would have smelled like as a buff young high school student, bursting through the front door after football practice with sweaty armpits and grass stained knees, alive and flushed and filled with vitality. He would have opened the fridge and grabbed the entire carton of two-percent milk and started chugging it, in that impulsive teenage boy kind of way. And then, he would have joined Kevin and me at the dinner table, where we would have eaten something simple and weeknighty. Not Hamburger Helper, since the eighties are totally over, but maybe stir-fried tofu and curried vegetables with rice. Zach would most certainly grow up to be a vegetable lover, unafraid of spicy or exotic foods, having spent several years of his youth in Bangladesh or Guatemala, wherever Kevin and I had dragged him to do international teaching or volunteering stints. He might even be one of several kids in the family, but I can't think about that now.

I turn away from Kevin and stare at the ceiling, tears pouring out in rivulets, again flowing straight into my ears. By this point, my wad of toilet paper is totally saturated with snot and spit and disintegrating in the palm of my hand, but I hardly notice.

And then, Kevin and I have a simple conversation, always more or less the same discourse pattern: me proclaiming that I want my son, unable to mask the despair and hurt that I feel. Kevin assuring me that he knows, he misses our son too. Me repeating with increased agitation that I want my son. Kevin either repeating his first response, or saying nothing at all, just taking a deep breath and pressing against me. It's frustrating to talk in circles like this, pining after something that no longer exists, something that Kevin can't produce for me with a few magic words. Kind of like trying to hug the air, hoping my arms will land on my baby boy, alive and wiggling around and looking up at me, and always coming up empty.

Once we gone back and forth about this to my satisfaction, once I feel certain that I have sufficiently and accurately conveyed to Kevin my main point, once my snot and tear reserves are depleted and I've had it with all this fruitless blubbering, I ask Kevin to tell me a funny Chuck Farting Story. I'm talking, of course, about his old college roommate Chuck, who had undiagnosed but seriously nasty gas problems. One of my favorite tales is when Chuck and Kevin and some other people went to Las Vegas, and Chuck ate so many beans at a Tex-Mex buffet that he turned the entire hotel room into a stench cube that night, and Kevin had to go sleep out in the hall. I know Kevin thinks its silly to force such contrived, inorganic discourse—the good stories should come up naturally, he always tells me—but nowadays, thankfully, he always goes along with it.

We end with good belly laugh, and Kevin's relieved that I'm not going to slit my wrists, and I'm relieved that he's not going to slit his wrists, not that I was ever concerned about that, and he's relieved that I'm relieved, and I'm relieved that he's relieved.

And then we just get on with our day like nothing out of the ordinary just happened, and I don't feel like a Mom anymore. For the time being, anyway.

Monica LeMoine is a writing instructor, former Peace Corps Volunteer, and founder of the pregnancy/infant loss blog Knocked Up, Knocked Down. She lives in Seattle with her husband and puppy dog and is currently working on her first book, Knocked Up, Knocked Down (KuKd), a humorous memoir.