To the Child Who Doesn’t Exist

Epistolary Poem

Long before I first had sex, I knew I didn’t want you. My arms held newborns so tiny they almost didn’t fit. Smelled the freshness of a life just begun. Watched the growing belly of sisters and feared the vision for myself. Distended. Parasitic. Dull skin and hair, bruising under glazed eyes.

Two small nephews dropped in my lap. Custody not mine, and yet you’d never know. A blowout so severe, I rinsed him off in the kitchen sink. Bleach became my friend. Real friends grew distant or walked beside strollers. Went bowling, went drinking. The ones who stayed pushed swings. Cut food into little pieces. Clicked car seats into cars that did not need them. I had late nights of crying. Warming bottles beneath running water. Bouncing. Pacing. Rocking.

I work with children now. Infants. Toddlers. Red faces. Chubby fists. Pealing laughter of a joy that’s never known pain. An avalanche of diapers. And in the end, the door opens and shrieks of joy follow the pattering of tiny feet running from my arms to theirs.

You could have had a brother. A redheaded child who is snarkier than me. Dedicated and passionate. Stony eyes on a wrestling mat. Arms up. Back hunched. Drive! Would he have even liked you? Would he roll his eyes? Push you away? Refuse to share a room, because his space is his and you would be an invasion? He became the family I didn’t expect, and I don’t know where you would have fit.

I never wanted you. I never wanted to be a mother. Yet, I see the possibilities of you. In the faces of my nephews, my nieces. Blonde curls. Blue eyes. A dimpled smile. Would you have looked like me? Would your laugh be the cackling of a witch? Would you carry my sadness within you? Eyes always open, collecting pebbles not because they’re beautiful, but for the way they fit your palm. Would you have my spontaneity? Climbing fences, trees. Befriending every puppy, every bug, every stranger. Smiling so large it attempts to leap off the edges of your face.

I didn’t waste the love you never received. I placed it on hard bleachers in a fluorescent-lit gym, pins and needles reminding me of its existence every move I make. In the tiny hands that grasp onto mine. In the arms I wrap around the nephews I gave my 20’s to. And I gave it to the woman in the mirror with painted lips and bruising under her heavy-lidded eyes.