The newborn bracelet was still in my coat pocket

Dear Delyara, I gave birth to a son who lived for nine hours. That was seven months ago. Tonight, while taking out my winter coat, I found his hospital bracelet in the pocket. I must have placed it there when we left the hospital, though I remember almost nothing about that morning except the nurse asking whether I wanted to be taken out through a side entrance so I would not pass the maternity ward. The bracelet is impossibly small. His name, my surname, his date of birth, and a number longer than the time he lived. My husband put all the hospital things into a memory box, but this one escaped. I held it around my finger and realised it was loose even there. People say grief comes in waves, but this was not a wave. It was a trapdoor. One second I was looking for gloves; the next I was back in a room where my baby’s chest no longer moved. I have not told my husband I found it. He is sleeping beside me now, one hand resting on the empty space between us. The bracelet is under my pillow. I know it belongs in the box. Tonight, I need one piece of my son outside the place where we have officially stored him.