What Happened to my Baby ?

I did want love. I did want marriage. And I did want a child.

In Crouch End... I stared
At every baby sailing by ...with such desire to have
My own ...my little one to love.. to *sail by with*...
I could not contain
My longing .. my craving for such a being.

I was consumed with passion
I could see it all...the Push-chair full of baby...
Being wheeled by me
as I ...shopped for buns and tins of mushy peas.
And I ..as happy as a Song Bird
Now that I now had my nest and my own dear fledgling in it.

It was MY dream...not yours.
But
I did not let that get to me..

The day came..I was growing a child...
Deep inside me.....and I was swelled with pleasure.

It was not exactly your first choice of all things wonderful..but..
You were sweet enough to smile.
Brought up a Claret from the cellar..
We clinked ... you downed a lot
Before the coq au vin was even cooked
If I remember well.

After some pregnant months...
We walked amongst the ancient trees along the Summer Lake
In London’s Ken Wood’s open space
...where Yehudi lived and played his fiddle
His lovely Jewish Violin...Notes gliding through air...so sweet and so divine
And so unlike the mood ‘tween you me..
What was it that we argued on ? I now have no recall.
But... I do remember iced in pain...you said
*I knew that we should never be having this baby*...
And this wounded me
More than a thousand words no matter how harsh or cruel
Or vicious they might have been
This wounded me as deeply as the dying soldier’s bullet.

And though we made it up those words did not depart...they lingered in me...
My confidence was gone.

Then visiting in Kent...we stopped for berries..and as I bent to pick them
A pain slid into me as sharp and acid as a swift knife blade
And we drove home...your mother said.. lie down and this I did ..
Blood flowing from me and the pain grew worse...
Until I lay in a White Hospital... so full of dread... of what might be to come

Over those long and sweat-felt days
I begged my child to stay...I said ...dear child I love you so
You are so wanted...do not depart from me...do not leave me now
I love you so...

In the next bed a sweet girl platted her hair...my home is in jamaica she told me
I hope your baby lives...I had to let mine go...I had no place for it to sleep
Nothing for it to eat...I had to let mine go....Life’s tough..I pray for yours...

And we stretched a hand across and held on tight...
Two women in a desperate plight thrown side by side by chance
Strangers immersed in deepest hollow agony.....
Both cradling our pain.

Talking to my unborn child...talking, talking, pleading for the gift of life
The dark pretty stranger understood.

The pain increased and I became so drugged I could not speak
They knocked me out, my eye-lids cement bricks...I felt the greatest fear
Rise up within but I could not move...and I was gone...
When I came too they said ...you lost your little boy

And I wept and wept and wept..and he was gone ...the whole sweet dream was over.

That was all so long ago... a tear rolls down my cheek now as I write...

I wonder why I never saw my child...why did I never see him ?
Where did he go...? Why was he never buried.. In a small white box.
Where was he taken? ...the little child I did not know
But I already loved so well...
This mother who would come between a raging bull and him
This mother who would kill for him...who would have died for him

What happened to my baby ?

Was he tossed into a bin....to be incinerated...
I am weeping now.

After that..You and I did not go on for long
That walk...that day came back to me...and it was over...

Kristine Byrne 24th september. 2010