Napowrimo day 6

REMINDER TO VOTE TODAY

An apology to the child I will never have:

This is not a happy poem.

My neverborn child.
I am so sorry.
I cannot fathom bringing life into this world.
To labor for nine months
To divert my very heart's blood
To this other thing I put before my own life
And for what?

So that your first breath of air will be the stale and processed texture of a hospital room
And that your second may be the exhaust from the billions of cars across the hot and dry asphalt highway that the earth has become.

So that you will feel the blistering heat of California's wildfires on their tender and new skin
Be torn at by the winds of hurricanes that level islands.
So that your lips and tongue will dry and crack in the dessert land that India has become.

I cannot imagine bringing you into this world where the first thing you hear is
A sex that will haunt you for the rest of your life
Whether or not you try to leave it behind
A sex that demands you to be murderer or murdered
Hysterical or emotionless.
A world where a proclamation of joy is damning, so what what must a proclamation of damnation sound like?

A world where you would see the faces of white men in power
And all the hate they hold in their eyes
Hundreds of sick and homeless and starving on the walk from the hospital to the car
You would see disaster
Tragedy, devastation, every time they turned on the news
A new cause to devote time and money to
A new hill to die on

How could I have you in a world where you won't have enough to eat?
In a world where you won't have a roof to sleep under?
There will be no money to pay your medical bills, to send you to college.
How could I birth you into a world where I could never give you what you deserve?
How could I create another soul's suffering and pain on top of a world of suffering and pain?
Another drop in a bucket of misery
Another straw on the dying camels back?

I said this was not be a happy poem.