My mother bought my kids a new book called Little Quack's Bedtime and we were reading it at dinner tonight for the first time. It's about a mother telling her five ducks to go to sleep. It's a simple tale of ducks being scared of the dark, but of course, if you think as I do, you can see infertility references in everything. The ducks point out all the things that are scaring them about the dark and the mother reassures them.

And then that last duck...goddamn Little Quack...had to twist his figurative knife into my literal heart.

Puddle shut his eyes and went to sleep.
But Little Quack was still awake.
Little Quack looked. Little Quack listened.
All around was dark dark dark.

"Mama!" he cried. "Why, oh, why is the night so dark?"

Mama snuggled close, and then she said,
"So the stars can shine their twinkling light.
That's why the night is, oh, so dark."

And I bawled.