My unborn
It should have wept at my funeral
It could have been anything it liked
It may have made me a grandmother
It may have been pale or rosy or dark,
comfortable and perhaps sang like a bird.
Or maybe serious and childless
with a passion for cats,
I wonder what grace it might have developed?
Scars, broken bones, broken hearts.
Would it had swum, rode a bike, took exams
Been beautiful or manly?
How can I speak of a life never born
expectant, important and sad?
My one small child, never delivered, never made.
I've so many questions for you.
I don't understand why I think of it all the time.
Probably for I have no family.
It came and grew to an inch before lost,
I was never to know its fancies.
I see it each day, on a street, in a face.
made real by a baby which grew,
and didn't suffer the fate it had
of being washed down a loo.
The mystery is you tried to be here.
Your absence made me feel like death.
Snatched away in an accident,
through a feeling I will never understand.
You had no name at the time and still have none now,
or sex or hair or eyes,
yet you were as human to me
as your mother was.
By now, you should have been eighteen years old,
Scoffing and maybe ashamed of your parent.
But I would have kept a warm bedroom for you,
Washed your clothes and fed your cat.
I'd carry your photo in my purse.
And these words would not be written,
The day you fell away from me,
The day I died a little.