This is an ode to two lives, really: That of our first would-be child, no larger than a blueberry and lost to an unknown fate, and this sweet bird whom I found early one morning on our back steps. It’s difficult to find a way to grieve a sense of potential you have only just come to know when it slips away. Society seems to require that women navigate this quietly and internally and alone. It’s not polite dinner conversation, even though it leaves you with an indefinable yearning that can never be fulfilled. This little sparrow, still in the pale dawn light and weighing scarcely an ounce, also seemed to be lacking a witness. I decided to memorialize her as best I could, with the last blossoms of summer and a soft violet light that feels not quite of this world, but perhaps of the next.