You Are Here
By Tracie Adams
Listen to Tracie reading her story:
Before you were trapped in amber, time moved like lightning toward eternity.
And this is how it happened.
On the third anniversary, you placed silk flowers by the tiny cross. They were tulips.
Before you bought those tulips, there was a second anniversary. You joined a therapy group of grieving parents, but the therapist was the only one who talked. Everyone else only mumbled, “I don’t know how it happened.” The therapist said that grief could be disorienting like that.
Before you joined a therapy group, you took the long way so you wouldn’t have to see the tiny cross placed against the pine tree on the other side of the intersection. Your husband spent three days making it out of wood from the crib that he broke into pieces. He burned the rest in a barrel in the alley behind your townhouse.
Before he built the cross and burned the rest, there was a first anniversary. You locked yourself in your room with a bottle of wine. Your sheets hadn’t been changed in three months. Under the mascara-stained pillows, there were crumpled tissues, crunchy with salty tears and snot.
Before you drank the wine, they discharged you for the memorial service. You wore blue, the color of the walls in the nursery, the same shade as the cloudless sky above you.
Before the memorial service, you stayed for two weeks in the psych ward of the hospital where your child was born dead.
Before you stayed in the psych ward, your husband’s face was ashen, new lines surrounding his eyes. You wanted to trace them with your finger, but your arms wouldn’t move.
Before that, you never felt the bits of glass they dug out of your scalp. You slept like a baby through the surgery when they delivered your stillborn child into the hands of your husband.
Before your baby died, you never saw the truck coming. The impact sent you flying through the open sunroof onto the shoulder of the road, littered with soda cans and shattered glass.
Before you laid in shattered glass, you felt a sharp kick, the baby landing a foot under your ribs. You laughed out loud, and you unbuckled your seatbelt so you could get a deep breath. Your round tummy brushed against the steering wheel as you turned left at the intersection.
Before you made the left turn, you were happy.
Before that, you were driving with the sunroof open to a cloudless sky, singing along to the familiar song on the radio. It was much too loud, but you liked it like that. Especially when you’re happy.
Before you sang to loud music rising up through the open sunroof, you told your best friend you would be there in twenty minutes. You chose a blue dress for the baby shower. You couldn’t wait for them to feel your little boy’s kicks.
It happened like this.
You are trapped in amber. Time stands still for eternity, and you cannot go back.
Tracie Adams, a 2025 Pushcart nominee, writes from her farm in rural Virginia where she spends a ridiculous amount of time with two writing buddies who look a lot like dachshunds. Her work is featured in BULL, Does It Have Pockets, Cleaver Magazine, Sky Island, Raw Lit, and others. Read her work at www.tracieadamswrites.com and follow her on Twitter @1funnyfarmAdams.
What an achingly beautiful story. My heart feels torn in two. The details and images of the sky, the color blue, the nursery walls and her dress to the baby shower and the funeral were heartbreaking and real. Congratulations on an excellent piece in a fantastic magazine!