Once a Mother

...I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive. You can’t forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.

There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me.

if only somehow you could have been mine,
What would not have been possible in this world?


Agha Shahid Ali in: The Country Without a Post Office
quoted in

Once a Mother:
Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of
unmarried mothers in South India, by PienBos