I mourn children
I chose not to have.
Not because my body failed me,
not because fate slammed a door,
but because I refused to open it.
Because I’ve seen this world —
its teeth, its hunger,
its way of chewing through innocence
and spitting out something tired
and lonely
and still expected to smile.
People talk about life
like it’s a gift,
a golden ticket,
a miracle souls stand in line for.
But I remember too much.
I’ve lived too many cycles.
I know what it costs to come here.
The amnesia is mercy,
not mystery.
I cannot ask someone
to walk into this place
blindfolded
because I wanted to feel whole,
or praised,
or needed.
I do not want to carve myself open
and offer my child
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
a piece of my soul
just so I can be dragged back here again
in another life,
another body,
another round of lessons
I never asked to learn.
I mourn them anyway —
the ones who never took their first breath,
the ones who never asked me to be their mother,
the ones whose names soften
like fog around my heart.
I picture them sometimes:
shadows of futures I turned away from,
little spirits waiting in some cosmic hallway,
wondering if I’ll ever call them down.
And the strangest part is —
I love them,
these children I will never meet.
I love them enough
to spare them.
I love them enough
to break the cycle
instead of binding them to it.
But love doesn’t stop grief.
It never has.
So I sit with the ache
of what might’ve been,
letting the sadness bloom and fade
like a bruise in my chest.
This is my quiet mourning:
not for lost potential,
but for a lineage
I chose to end,
for a future
I refused to birth,
for souls I sent back home
with gentleness
instead of dragging them
into the violence of living.
Maybe that is motherhood too —
a choice not to create
what you cannot bear to see suffer.
And maybe in another universe,
I held them.
And maybe in this one,
I loved them enough
not to.
