Creative Writing

Secret Hope

Turning it over,

Examining it with care,

She places it back in the drawer.

Fear consumes,

Doubt floods in,

The hope is tucked away.

Who might she have been,

Had she dusted off that little hope,

And polished it with care?

What place does this dream have,

Set in the back of her wardrobe,

A secret longing never realized?

One Million kisses before I go

I can feel the soft press of a small cheek against mine, our breathing rising and falling together. I breathe in the sweetened scent of new life and close my eyes. This moment is gone as I hold it. I breathe it out and whisper as I kiss your cheek, “one million kisses”. Life has taught me nothing is forever, but I will imprint this into your soul, my love surrounding you, and one million kisses before I go.

a promise of hope

“This is just too much. Send them back.” The words were lightning running through me, ringing in my ears. They filled the space between my husband and I. We stood in the kitchen, cleaning and preparing the dozens of bottles consuming our counters. Someone we’d just introduced to our newborn twins told him to send them back. Those words held the weight of what we faced, of the radical love we had chosen, and the impossible task before us. They weren’t wrong. It was too much, how could we? I thought about the caseworker’s words, gently spoken as he sat across from me in my living room, surrounded by babies, “you are a family in crisis now.” Four babies in fifteen months, a crisis. One starting to take first steps, another beginning to crawl, and now, two more, tucked into the mid-century living room designed perfectly for a family of four. This is what a crisis looked like in the eyes of the state.

Objectively, it was too much. But, drowning out those words was the knowing peace I felt to my core. The question that kept flowing through me, “How could we not take them?” Mulling over all the worries of the naysayers, I was transported to the moment my phone rang. In my minds’ eye, I followed that journey, pacing from the couch to the dining room, trying to absorb the words the social worker was saying, twins. The sibling we were expecting for our foster daughter was twins. They’d just been born and were waiting for us at a hospital two hours south of us. Looking at my floor littered with building blocks and stuffed animals, I sank into the words she was saying, two more babies. With a certainty and stubbornness of purpose that defied all logic, I knew. I knew those babies were coming home.