The Part That Died

When I found out I could not carry a child,
a hush fell inside me—
not silence,
but something colder.

A part of me dropped dead.
Not with a scream,
but with the quiet collapse
of a cathedral under snow.

This part—
the part I had swaddled in dreams,
rocked gently with hope,
braided into the blueprint
of who I believed I was—
was gone.

The dreams of my nurturing nature,
the hope of becoming a vessel for life,
the joy of tiny arms and nighttime lullabies—
vanished like breath against a windowpane,
fading faster than I could trace them.

**“Do you think I have a chance?”** I whispered.
**“If you must,”** the doctor replied,
**“know you’d be risking your life,
with such seismic hormonal shifts.”**

With those clinical words,
she did not end me,
but pronounced the passing
of the life within the life—
the dream nested inside my ribs,
the womb I had thought eternal.

Tears fell like confession.
Salted prayers into the pillow.
I drifted toward sleep
bargaining with the stars:
**If I behave,
if I am good,
will you let me keep
what’s left?**

And so I became good—
dutiful, devout in my surrender.
Like a schoolgirl in her final exam,
I lay still on the sterile bed.
Not a tremor as the needle
pressed through skin and spine.

I made no fuss about the shaved patch of hair.
No protest about the bitter metallic taste
that lingered in my mouth like regret.
I swallowed meals like stones.
Smiled through waves of nausea,
as if joy could be rehearsed.

I was polite with my pain.
Grateful with my grief.
Wearing hope like hospital linen—
thin, temporary, and threadbare.

So when the doctors rejoiced—
**“You’ve made it!”**
when my parents exhaled in relief,
urging me to smile—
I stood there,
body intact,
soul in ruins.

They had saved the shell.
But what of the yolk?
What of the spirit that shimmered within,
now spilled,
now lost?

What had survived
was the scaffolding.
The house with its lights turned off.

The dream—
to carry life within me,
to feel the flutter of beginnings
beneath my ribs,
to raise a child whose laughter
would echo down the hallway of years—
gone.

Gone, too,
the cradle of nights spent humming songs,
the ritual of tucking a small soul into bed,
the tiny hands that might have reached for mine
in thunderstorms.

Gone.

Ashes of a future
burned in advance.

The scenes I played in my mind—
picnics in sun-dappled parks,
toddling footsteps across wooden floors,
crayon murals and birthday candles—
flickered,
then vanished.

And still—
I am told I survived.

But what is survival
if the core has been carved away?
If I wake in a house of memory
and every mirror says:
**“You were meant to be more than this.”**

When families gather
and stories are shared,
I sit among them
like a shadow at the feast,
smiling with lips,
aching with absence.

What good is a body mended
if the soul limps forward,
half-born,
half-buried?

I search the sky
for stars that once spelled my name
in constellations of motherhood.
They are dim now,
blurred behind clouds
that will not lift.

And yet—
beneath this aching ruin,
a whisper remains.

Not of the mother I longed to be,
but of the woman who is still here.

Not of the child I’ll never hold,
but of the lives I might still touch
with these scarred, sacred hands.

Not of the family I imagined,
but of a quieter grace—
a different kind of cradle,
where healing can rest.

I plant my feet
in this unfamiliar earth.
I water what I can.

And I rise.

Not in triumph,
but in truth.
Not unscarred,
but luminous in grief.

This, too, is survival.
Not the story I wrote,
but the song I now carry—
low, tender,
and true.