A Whisper, From a Mother
A Whisper, From a Mother
I did not expect the night to feel like this.
So cold.
So quiet.
As if the world had stopped breathing
the moment my body betrayed me.
The wind moves through the trees above me,
And their branches bend and sway,
Like they know something
I am afraid to say aloud.
I stand alone,
looking up at the dark sky,
Hoping it might explain-
Why is this happening now?
Why now, when my children are still so small?
My heart feels heavy,
not like sadness,
but like something sinking-
slow, deep,
Settling where hope used to rest.
The stars flicker faintly.
They look fragile tonight.
Like memories that know
They will not last.
I watch them and understand,
With a fear that steals my breath,
My time is thinning.
Quietly.
Cruelly.
This illness came without warning.
One moment, I was their mother-
tying shoelaces, wiping tears,
Counting bedtime stories.
The next,
My own body turned into a stranger,
a thief stealing breath from my chest,
minute by minute,
without mercy.
My thoughts rush to my children.
My five-year-old.
My seven-year-old.
Two small hearts
that still believe I am forever.
Soon, they will wake,
and I will not be there.
They have already lost so much innocence.
Now this.
Now me.
How will they face the nights?
When fear creeps in?
Who will pull them close
When the dark feels too big?
Who will whisper
that everything will be okay
and mean it with a mother’s certainty?
The thought of leaving them
breaks something inside me.
Not loudly.
But completely.
Like a stone cracking my heart
from the inside out.
A bird sings somewhere in the dark.
A night bird.
Its song is thin, aching,
filled with longing.
Each note cuts into me
because it sounds like what I feel-
calling for love
that cannot answer back.
I close my eyes
and hear my children instead.
Their voices.
Their laughter.
The way they talk when they are tired
and words fall over each other.
I remember holding them at night,
their warm bodies pressed against mine,
safe, trusting,
asleep in the place they believed
nothing bad could reach.
Those moments feel unreal now.
Like a dream, I am being pulled away from
too fast.
They are far from me tonight.
Staying with others.
Loved, yes-
but not by me.
Not in the way only a mother can love.
Do they miss me?
Do they feel the space I am leaving behind?
They do not know
that I am standing here now,
shivering,
wishing with everything I have left
to hold them just once more.
I look up again.
The stars blur through my tears.
They look like children-
bright, gathered together,
too far for my arms to reach.
Their light hurts.
Because it reminds me
of what I am about to lose.
The moon begins to fade.
The light thins.
My breath turns to mist.
I feel tired-
so deeply tired-
as if every year of my life
has settled on my shoulders at once.
I know this is the hardest goodbye.
The last one.
I turn away slowly.
Every step feels like leaving
a piece of myself behind.
I want to stay.
I want to fight.
But my strength is slipping,
quietly,
like the light retreating from the sky.
I look back once more.
Just once.
My soul cries out for my children.
The night does not answer.
And I walk on-
a mother carrying love
with nowhere left to place it,
leaving behind the two faces
That was my whole world.
And I believe that the love I planted in their small hearts will keep walking with them, even when I cannot.