Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers!
I’m so happy you’re here.
The story of this poem: I read a post by that featured a poem written by to the child he never had. Here’s that post below if you want to check out the poem for yourself:
I have a lot of feelings about not having children as I approach the end of my 30s. Most days, I feel like it’s the right call, but sometimes, I still wonder.
NEVER-GIRL There is a girl who does not walk the Earth because of me. She tried for many years: She picked at stubborn doorknobs, She sent tricksters to ease her way, She arranged meet-cutes. So many attempts to burn through the veil, To feel the wind on her cheeks. Finally, I had to sit down with her, To tell her some truths: No, little girl, I cannot allow you passage to this world, There being not enough space for my own body to live, There being not enough hands to meet your needs, There being so little cash in a land that holds it sacred, There is no home for you here. I cannot allow your creation. The thought of you is something that I forbid from imagination. Instead, a black curtain swings, Then nothing. I cannot want you, Because I cannot have you, And this kind of wanting, unmet, is enough to rip a woman apart, Leaving her as bloody-bruised and empty as the woman who does bear children. I have covered you over, Layer after layer of forgetting, As a pearl that sits inside me, Just below my ribs. If I’m not careful, the layers shift, And your voice threads up my bones and into my heart. I cannot allow you, Because a hunter is not fit to be a mother, Because I contain too many land mines that have yet to be safely defused, Because I have learned to do the terrible math Of whose needs get met when there isn’t enough. Your plastic sister spreads her arms wide inside me, So jealous. She ensures that she encounters no competition for my love. She is the second of her name, And her arrival brought me to my knees, Vomiting, Blackout-blind, Yet this Is better than your feet upon this Earth, my sweet never-girl.
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So tender and beautiful. I kept returning to:
"Instead, a black curtain swings,
Then nothing.
I cannot want you,
Because I cannot have you"