The Gift

Photo by Shiv Shankar

I dreamt of you when I was a girl
a hazy promise,
alien and enchanting
The vision bore fruit decades later,
a happy union of God,
luck and human biology

When the time came
you slithered out covered in vernix,
beautiful from the moment I saw you,
a part of myself I did not recognise:
pure, unmarred,
miraculous

Each sunrise brings growth and learning
though often it is you who are the teacher,
gracious when I disappoint myself,
encircling me in childish arms of forgiveness
before toddling off
to wear your sister’s pink boots

A boy whose character came fully formed,
already propelling away from us
into your future, where you will carve out
a small space in the corner of your heart,
that will always be mine
though I want more

My love is for you is a rolling beast,
the last of my own childhood
dispelled with the birth,
a baptism from which
faith was reborn and
a handmaiden and warrior emerged

Sometimes I dream
my hand on your brow heals,
that God has bestowed mothers with
not just nurturing hands but powerful ones
How we turn away from science in our fragility
preferring to cling to beggar’s beliefs

We are guardians not jailers
Though you were born of me
you are not mine to keep
First a thought, then a bean,
now a boy, and one day, I pray,
a man

And I will pray.
I will pray.

For your safety, and your health
That your passions sustain you
and do not burn you
That the war ravaged Earth
remains a haven for you
even if it does not for me

From the moment of your conception
I cannot envisage any other way
but for the soil to be my bed
before it is yours
Happy sadness, that though I rot
there is yet life in your bones

Still, I mourn the distance
that stretches ever further
from the day the cord was cut
under the bleak hospital lighting
when I heard your first wail
and I knew

That forever would not be
long enough to be with you

And we are at the mercy of fate.

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