Sketching the un-shed tears

Dr Sudhansu Dash

I gave you life but you are not mine

I felt your kicks and you felt my heart beat

You listened my voice as I talked

Nine month I got to nurture you to feel you grow each day

The scars on my secret womb reminds me perfectly of you

Because it tells the story of you and me.

Everybody knows the preface but none the folded pages.

As I handed you to your loving parents

I had but to return with an empty bosom.

I whispered something

Do you remember?

I sent with you a piece of my heart

A part of my soul

I love you in every way

Unknown to anybody else except me.

My tears halting in my empty eyes

Are not allowed to come out of the margin of the eyes

Because people say I am a mortgaged mother

Incapable to shed tears either of   love or of separation.

My motherhood is measured with some coppers.

I can never say you good bye

The way I wanted to

Nor got to whisper to your ear

How much I cared for you?

My eyes are not chanced to look at you or to touch your button nose

To feel your hair or to count your little toes.

My lips could not utter the words

That I thought needed to be said.

I can never give you up because you were never mine

Your parents have been waiting for you

With their dreams and love from the start

Although I carried you next to mine

As you are conceived from my heart

All my ‘me’ I gave you in my labor and birth

With every drop I pumped for you

You will know your worth.

Expand your little heart

My child

To forgive your discounted mother