It used to sting my bones
when someone called me “selfish”
for not having had children,
and it has taken me years
to learn how to say
what I have always known.
Now that I am
this far from the beginning
and this close to the end,
I will say it and be at rest.

Wherever you are now,
you who were unborn to me, 
my unknown child or children, 
I say this:

you are blessed,

for our absent, never-was bond
would have been a mistake
made of lightning:
immediate fire consuming all,
echoing ever after.
No one could have survived.  

Be glad forever, wherever you are,
that you are not my children, that I am no
father of yours; that my storms were not yours,
that my slow burn-down was not yours as well;
that whatever tenderness 
we may have felt for each other
was not wasted into ash. Be glad
that while I did not know how
to speak of it,
I understood it well enough
to keep it from happening again.