On a daughter I will never have:

I refuse motherhood.

Grief grows in my stomach

to supplant her    absence.

I think of     gardens—

Heavy quilts woven against Earth’s shiver—

and her roots beginning under me.

I fear         glass.

A barbed portrait of my face

paints her: fragile.

I wish for     life,

but I watch as skeletons drag destruction’s

infantile descent upon her   home.

I love       her

as much as my mother loved me, and so

I will deliver her birth from     death.

I miss       her

as much as I miss me, but

this emerald womb will remain empty.

-Iris