CADWEN’S LAMENT
I never expected to cradle you in my arms
With such tenderness and fear.
Your eyes, unopened, your skin
Dark like the man I loved for only a passing night.
Your delicate lips, your hands:
So small and so fragile.
I fear you will crumble at my touch.
They wrap you in blue, my daughter—
My warrior, my fighter
My child.
They wipe away the blood,
The sweat,
The grime that comes from dancing
On the edge of life and death.
For nine months I carried you.
My blood ran through your heart,
Where it beat in the hollow of my womb,
So strong, so fierce;
The size of a pin.
And here you lie within my reach;
Within my grasp;
My long advent finally abated.
I am seeing you for the first time,
On the steps of the hall you were born in.
I am seeing you for the first time,
Not wrapped in swaddling clothes, but in a shroud,
Bearing the sigil of a man of high prestige.
I am seeing you for the first time:
My daughter.
My child.
My mistake.
And at last I cradle you, as a mother should.
I clutch you to my breast,
Praying to the One, to the light, the dark
To the Stars who listen,
That this body mine which gave you life
Might give the gift once more.
But you are grown, a woman proud;
And yet an infant broken and alone,
Cursed by the regret of a remorseless parent.
I know now that my lover did not leave.
I see him in the blood that mats your hair,
And in the wounds that shattered iron bone.
You are the soldier who I thought could never be.
You are the child whom I’d wished I’d never born.
And I—
I am but a stranger on the steps.
