There is an absence in my belly
Where you do not grow.
My arms throb with your not-weight.
I cannot smell your fresh-milk scent.
My ears ache for want of your cries.
My aging eyes, probing crowds for you,
Glimpse only transitory echoes of your smile
In the faces of children who belong to other women.
Still, I wait.
-~-~-~-~
This was written some time ago, but felt a little too raw to post for a while. Things have changed in recent months, and it finally feels ok to put out into the world. I’m not waiting anymore. Or, more precisely, will be waiting for just four more months.
Oh! This is a deeply touching piece. We waited almost a year for our first to form. So beautifully spilled to the page, this. And congratulations. How WONDERFUL.
Hello again! So good to see your wonderful poems back on the page! I’ve been checking now and then to see if you’ve put up anything new and strangely just found a random link to your blog from another blogger very kindly pointing everyone in your direction!
What a really wonderful poem this is, I could really feel the emotion coming out of those words! I’ve never been a woman who longs to have children, I like children, but just not bothered that I don’t have any of my own, but despite the difference in my feelings, I felt quite emotional reading this! Because emotion is all the same in the end, but to able to convey that to others that may not normally relate to it, is a very remarkable talent! And I’m so pleased for you and your husband, it must be a very exciting experience creating another person!!
I have a cousin (20 year old) who’s son is like a clone of him, so much in fact I keep wanting to call him the same name as his dad! It really doesn’t seem so long ago that his father was running around himself as a giggly baby in the mid 90′s – very bizarre to see it all happening again!
So enjoy the baby years, and take loads of photos, because it will go so fast!
Well, all the best for the big event!
Suzy
)
(commented previously as Susanna – Suzy is my new internet name
Thank you, both! We’re super excited, and I am so, so grateful.
I was quite surprised by the depth of longing that hit me in the last year – I always knew I wanted to be a mother someday, but had been quite content to wait. But then I really did start seeing glimpses of the child I didn’t have in all the little ones around me, and it felt like a loss, the not-yet-ness, and the maybe-not-ever-ness of the waiting. Not all that I write is autobiographical (I am a big fan of the “storytellers’ creed” – all that I write is true, and some of it really happened), but this was pretty directly connected to my actual experience.
Oh, mercy. This went straight to my heart. How many times have I felt exactly this way? There must be many of us who do, and yet, such a feeling is so personal, too.
The first time through, I didn’t read the note at the end. (My dog interrupted me to go out.) When I went back and re-read your poem, I read the footnote and I am thrilled for you! That’s just wonderful.
PS–I found you through jasminecalyx.
Congratulations.
How exciting!
You are such a wonderful writer, and I’m sure you will be an even better mommy. Blessings, beautiful.