Some grief does not scream.
It smolders.
Infertility.
Miscarriage.
They arrive like a fire that never fully goes out,
like embers pressed beneath the skin,
like a flame you learn to live beside because putting it out would mean denying it ever burned at all.
This is not just loss.
It is the quiet burial of dreams that learned your heartbeat before the world ever knew their names.
And so you learn to perform.
You learn to smile for well-meaning people.
To say, I’m fine.
To say, I don’t want kids anyway.
To say, This is just how my life turned out.
You learn to make your childless reality sound complete.
Whole.
Chosen.
You learn to pretend there is no void.
But there is a hollow space the world cannot see.
A silence shaped like lullabies that were never sung.
A calendar with dates that still ache when they pass,
even when no one else remembers why.
There are no photographs.
No birth announcements.
No visible proof of the love that lived here.
Only a body that remembers
and a soul that carries names it never spoke aloud.
The ache hides in ordinary moments.
In baby aisles.
In casual questions.
In conversations that assume acceptance equals absence of grief.
You grieve what was lost.
You grieve what never arrived.
You grieve the version of yourself that once believed love would lead somewhere visible.
Some days you convince even yourself that everything is fine.
That you are at peace.
That the flame has gone out.
But Crow and Flame know better.
They know that ash does not mean emptiness.
It means something sacred burned here.
It means love existed, fiercely, even if briefly.
It means grief is not weakness but devotion without a place to land.
You are not broken for carrying this quietly.
You are not dishonest for protecting others from your truth.
You are not ungrateful for feeling the absence alongside the life you live.
You can survive in a childless reality
and still mourn the life that never came.
Both can be true.
The flame remains, low and steady,
not because you are stuck,
but because some loves do not end.
They change form.
They become smoke, memory, and ache.
They become part of who you are.
And even when you say everything is fine,
the fire knows
what it was meant to warm.
Crow and Flame 