I Have no children, I will have no children.

Sperm have swum in me but drowned, nothing

planted, nothing caught. I will never feel a knee

swipe across my body from the inside

like a credit card in a slot, like a dancer’s toe

across a gleaming floor. My blood will never pulse

with another living heartbeat. I will never grow

blue crooked veins from baby weight. My legs

will always be less like my mother’s, more like my father’s.

Perhaps I will always be more child than adult,

always a daughter, never the monarch, never the queen

commanding my subjects, never the woman warm

in bed with the child who carries her dreams to me in

the blackest moments of night. I will never rush my child,

swollen, hive-ridden, to the emergency room. I will never

wonder where she is at 2 a.m., will never worry about her

drinking and driving, will never be told to f*ck off

by the teenaged version of the baby

whose lips used to pull at my nipple, my milk

dropping low through my breast like love.

 

~

Relephant Read:

Childless at 50 & My Dance With the Eternal Boy. ~ Greg Turiya Liotta

~

Author: Kate Evans

Editor: Renee Jahnke

Image: Vinoth Chandar-Flickr