Poetry
Birthing Love
How do people come to be? Is there a repository of souls, where you’ll go back and wait for me?
TW: child loss
You are gone from my body now.
I can no longer feel you.
Your presence made me unwell, physically.
Tired. Bloated. Retching.
But you made me feel whole, spiritually.
Precious. Powerful. Purposeful.
I wonder who you could’ve been.
I wonder if you would’ve liked camping.
If you would’ve been a cat-person or a dog lover.
Whether you would’ve been a sweet tooth
Or loved spicy food.
There are so many things I’ll wonder forever.
The pain of the plan to not bring you into this world,
The sorrow of severing a chord, unformed,
I was drowning with that weight.
On the body, it was a simple procedure.
On the mind, torture.
Yet, I did it.
I just wasn’t ready.
The burden of my wholeness
Was too much to put on your tiny shoulders.
The meaning of my life
Too much to derive from yours.
I want to be a good mother to you baby.
I want you to feel so, so loved.
I want you to know you are cherished.
And that you matter.
I want to help you be the best possible version of yourself.
How can I do that for you, I wondered,
Where I can’t do it for myself?
How can I teach you self-love
If I haven’t mastered it myself?
How can I teach you self-forgiveness
If I struggle with it myself?
If I’m still a work in progress,
How can I hope to be great for you?
I had to send you away.
I’m truly sorry.
They say you weren’t a real person yet.
A 4-millimetre ball of cells.
It’s not your body I’m sorry about,
It’s your soul.
You’re gone and I don’t feel sick anymore.
No nausea, no tiredness, no dizzying spells.
Only an empty feeling in my heart.
One day, I’ll be ready for you.
I’ll welcome you with capable, loving arms.
I don’t know whether I’ll get you or another soul.
I’m not even sure how this works.
How do people come to be?
Is there a repository of souls
Where you’ll go back and wait for me?
Is there a conveyor belt
Where souls get put into bodies at the time of birth?
Is each soul assigned to the nurture of a certain mum?
Or is it all random, the cards we are dealt?
And ‘souls’ are just figments of the collective human imagination.
What I’m sure about is this -
I love you.
I want you.
Whoever you may be.
Amidst a world of confusion,
You’ve given me this staunch certainty.
Thank you for opening my eyes to this fact -
Life will change, no matter what.
The only thing for me to do,
Is to ride the waves from an empowered place.
Or risk being dragged like a puppet putting on a human face.
Thank you for giving me a renewed sense of direction -
Being myself, but a better version.
So good things can come from me,
Even if good things didn’t come to me.
I love you so much.
There’s nothing I want more than to hug you.
To hold you, to kiss you.
To make you feel peace and comfort.
To make you feel wanted,
And needed,
And capable of making a difference.
But first, I must be able to do those things for me.
Only from the abundance of myself, can I give to you more fully.
Thank you for that reality check.
I promise I will work on me.
Next time you do me the honor of coming back,
I will care for you till my last, dying breath.
I may not have given birth to you.
But you gave birth to me -
To this capacity for nurture,
To hope in the face of despair,
To healing from trauma.
In me, you gave birth to unconditional love.
Thank you so much for reading. If my writing resonates with you, you can find more on my Medium Profile.
