I miss the children I never had.

I was never pregnant. I never miscarried. There is no medical chart, no ultrasound photo folded into a drawer. And yet, there are two girls I have known for quite some time—two girls conceived in my mind.

I’m not exactly sure when this little mental game started. Maybe when I began wondering what I would have named a child if I had had one.

The feeling and wondering involve some sort of ache. A longing. But it isn’t only painful. There’s something sweet about it as well, or I wouldn’t keep returning to it, turning it over in my mind like a smooth stone.

Until recently, I didn’t have a word for this feeling.

But then, on my podcast Fifty Words for Snow, where my co-host Emily John Garces and I explore words from across the globe that don’t quite exist in English, I came across the Portuguese word saudade.

Our Portuguese guest, Lucas Gomes, described saudade as a form of missing that isn’t about temporary absence. It isn’t the kind of missing that assumes reunion. It’s not “you’re in the other room and I’ll see you in a minute.” As he explained it, saudade is something that arrives in the middle of an ordinary day and reminds you that something you love is simply not here. Not delayed. Not recoverable. Gone. Or perhaps never fully present to begin with.

What distinguishes saudade from ordinary longing is this: it does not point toward resolution. It names a desire that does not expect fulfillment.

What struck me immediately was how precisely that word fit the feeling I’d been carrying for years. And how satisfying that was. Like finally discovering that the weird pain in your foot has a Latin name and is therefore........

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