Sudhansu portrays the agony of a surrogate mother, in this poem, exclusively for Different Truths.

I gave you a life, but you are not mine
I felt your kicks and you felt my heartbeat
You listened my voice as I talked
Nine month I got to nurture you to feel you grow each day
The scars on my secret womb reminds me perfectly of you
Because it tells the story of you and me.
Everybody knows the preface but none the folded pages.
As I handed you to your loving parents
I had but to return with an empty bosom.
I whispered something
Do you remember?
I sent with you a piece of my heart
A part of my soul
I love you in every way
Unknown to anybody else except me.
My tears halting in my empty eyes
Are not allowed to come out of the margin of the eyes
Because people say I am a mortgaged mother
Incapable to shed tears either of love or of separation.
My motherhood is measured with some coppers.
I can never say you goodbye
The way I wanted to
Nor got to whisper to your ear
How much I cared for you?
My eyes are not chanced to look at you or to touch your button nose
To feel your hair or to count your little toes.
My lips could not utter the words
That I thought needed to be said.
I can never give you up because you were never mine
Your parents have been waiting for you
With their dreams and love from the start
Although I carried you next to mine
As you are conceived from my heart
All my ‘me’ I gave you in my labor and birth
With every drop of blood, I pumped for you
My ‘me’ in you will tell your worth.
Expand your little heart
My child
To forgive your discounted mother.

Poet’s Note: After listening to the tears of a surrogate mother from Canada, Meria Luwies. Can we measure the depth of a mother’s heart?

Photos from the Internet