elegy for an unborn daughter

in my dreams, I have a daughter. she has my smile, warm and stretching across her cheeks like it will burst. she has her father’s eyes—soft and gentle—and his laugh. she is perfect. I give her a beautiful name, and she is everything I wish for her to be. she is curious, always asks questions and tries new things and lives without my fear of failure; she is generous, never selfish, but builds firm boundaries; she shows kindness to each soul she meets. I teach her everything my parents taught me. she learns how to read, to escape into a story and to write her own. she learns how to proof a loaf of bread, how to cut butter into flour and dust berries in flour before adding them to batter. she learns how to love, how to be loved. her life is beautiful, free from worry and filled with joy.

only in my dreams do I have a daughter. she deserves freedom, but I cannot give her freedom. I know the life that awaits her. to be expected to give and give and give and give and give and give. to provide with every facet of her being; labor that is physical, emotional, mental, financial. to set her dreams aside for someone else’s, to be happy about that, to be willing to pretend to be happy about that. she deserves safety, but I cannot keep her safe in this life. a life where she is little more than prey to someone else: the man at the bar, the boy with the gun. I would teach her everything life taught me—keys between knuckles and block the door and hide away from windows and never rent on the first floor and never walk with headphones on and learn self-defense, because boys will be boys will be monsters—but what life is a life lived in fear? I long to hold her in my arms, but she is safer in my heart. so there she will stay.