And I might have wrapped him
in linen, showed him off to his cousins;
made him fat and languid with my milk.
I’d carry him out to the fields, rest
an hour among the clover, the wild violets,
the tormentil. I’d watch him laugh
along with fall of water from the hills.
But the loom is filled with severed thread;
the frailty of flowers passed over in grass.
the mirror silvered: the glass turned dark.
“I didn’t think I wanted children but in my 30s that turned into a longing for them. I have a husband but I’m childless not by choice. The Prospect is about what might have been. No matter how hard we weave we cannot make a child and no matter how hard we might peer into a mirror a child of our own will never stand beside us, and life is darker for that.”
Lynn Valentine’s debut poetry collection, Life’s Stink and Honey, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2022 after winning their literature award. She is working on her next collection, Fallow, for Cinnamon Press (due 2026). Her Scots language pamphlet was published in 2021 after winning Hedgehog Press’ dialect award.