To My Children I Won’t Ever Find In Family Pictures

*Write Club Post*

I never planned on bringing you into this world

I still might not

But just in case, I’m writing you this letter.

It’s not that I don’t want you,

It’s that abuse is etched in my bones

And I only want you to know love.

.

I wish I could unlearn spite,

Regurgitate the impatience I swallowed with every glass of water.

Pull the clock’s hands back and

Turn this carriage of emotions back into a pumpkin

So you could pick it out of the patch and carve a smile on its face.

I wish I could take back all the tears,

Unscar my body and

Turn my life back into a fairytale I read to you every night

So you don’t have to believe in anything less than a happy ending.

.

I wish I could forget everything I know I’ll do to you

Because I want your life to be better.

I want to take you everywhere I never got to go.

I want to make you everything you want to be.

I want to love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else.

The kind of love that won’t crack when we push a little too hard.

Love that doesn’t stand against walls of manipulation

Or graveyards of agency.

But love that builds itself from the damage of war.

.

I want to love you like I was never loved.

But I’m so scared I’ll hurt you,

That I let you stay above the clouds

Where abuse is a foreign word

And hatred hasn’t been used for centuries.

I’ll make you a ghost before you even live.

.

You were always meant to be an angel,

And angels aren’t supposed to be born from demons like me

But I guess that’s another thing God overlooked

Because I was supposed to be an angel too.

But I was just practice

And now He says it’s your turn,

Tells me I can do better with you.

But I don’t believe him.

.

I love you too much to give birth to you,

And I’m sorry

Because you don’t deserve that either.

.

-The Splintered Pencil