When the doctor asked me if I was sure

—I nodded.
Removing my organs would save me,
    but the scar tissue from healing guaranteed biological theft.  
Yet how could I prize the possibility
of a child
    over the certainty
of my own demise?
Plus, as the child of a sick parent,
I knew I could never justify
    handing down the same agony,
knowing what violence sick-parenting would commit upon them.
The doctor held my intubated hand
    then all went dark.

I awoke cured—
my insides packed with gauze to stem the bleeding
the gauze stuffing
    mimicked pregnancy
beneath my sliced up flesh,
but I knew all it was, was air.
From a Don’t Want
    to a Can’t Have.

And yet, new life.

Pregnant with the knowledge
that perhaps the life I gestated
                    the life I saved
                        and bore         was my own.

And that is enough.



II.

To start is to commit to something.

So many, in fear of committing to the wrong thing
commit by proxy to nothingness—
Awakening one day to solitude and silence

I think of my mother—who also awakes to solitude—
at least waters ever-blossoming memories
    of a once-in-a-billion love.
And of me, her progeny.

Absence hurts,
but what of the absence of a life
    not unloved,
but worse: un-participated-in.

Who is unborn?  
The child you will never have?
Or you?



III.

This vessel which cannot, and shall never carry a life
shall also not know
    the animal-knowledge of womanhood
    of grandchildren
    or legacy.

Perhaps these words
    are my legacy
The creation I participate in,
the birth I give,
is utterances
    lines
    books
    music
and snatches of memory—
of lives I may have touched—
    some known
some never known.

I shall mother the world.
I shall
tuck it in at night
and sooth it when it scrapes its knee,
    is uninvited from the party,
    does not win the championship.
When it wins its next victory
    and when its heart breaks open for the first and millionth time.

I shall be there.
In song or in silence.




— Alexandra Silber, March 1, 2022