Going through old drafts of stuff, I found this from last January

Letter to my unconceived child


Every so often, in the lull that follows things like crises of faith, yoga classes and earthquakes, I remember you by the little flutter you make in my abdomen, curled in an unmarked tissueless organ that yawns deeply somewhere among my viscera. I feel you in the moments that I resolve to be a better person, to give everything I wished to be given, to treat my self like a temple of succor and protection. Mysterious little fish, wholly unknowable tangle of electric desire, when I am doing things right, I do everything I do so that you may swim in waters that are clean and calm.

I don't know how long I have wanted you or when you came to be part of me or which came first. I believe that I have a spleen and a pancreas and a liver because I am told that I do, but I have never felt them like I feel my heart, or like I feel you. You are a part of me that, like my heart, marches in a fragile, steady cadence, mostly unnoticed, except for knocking hard when it is time for me to pay attention.

At once so much less and so much more than my biological imperative, at times the entire reason for my existence and at others the fiercest face my self-doubt can wear: do I, can I, deserve something as whole as you? I am filled with discontent watching my body move in a mirror when I think it is the shallow reflecting pool that is only mine; but when I think of it as your little swimming hole, your oasis, then I am filled with reverence for it, with the need to be careful and gentle with it.

You are loved. You are your own. You are a link in a chain that has meaning because of you.