Due Date

by Heather Carnaghan

All of the broken promises
of this beautiful
and awful date
are heavy in a place in my heart
where, now exists only stolen hope.

Who I was
and who you would have been
died that day and left me
with all of the parts of motherhood
that the drug of a newborn’s smell subdues.

How cruel it seems
that I also have this love
that is so deep
that I will take all of these awful things
if they are all I am meant to have of you.