Dear Woman Without Child

Woman without Child,

I see you.

You are stronger.

You are stronger than the tears boiling down your face.

You feel broken, but you will not break.

Will not break.

Never break.

New mountains of ache to climb, you are singed and sliced with heart pounding

Beating to break

Out to leave this shattered body.

The body that fails you.

You— stronger than your body.

The appointments, the needles, the suppositories, the procedures, the surgeries, the prying, the scanning to overrun, to defeat you.

Overflowing with questions that will never be. Were never meant to be answered.

Why not me? Why this?

More pills, more drugs, more shots. Just a little bit more.

And blood, blood draws, blood spotting, blood flowing. Scarlett is the color of failure

and beginnings.

No limits to new pain and new hurt, driving deeper past before, dicing old scars.

But still you are unbroken.

Scorches shining through you like embers of a fire that does not know how to die,

But death it feels like over and over again in waves of a shadowy sea with no compass.

You think, surely the fires will drown you.

You are a strong woman now.

They say that it takes a special kind of woman to be a mother.

Of that, I know nothing.

It takes a strong one not be.

And to be still.

To be here in this place unbroken.