You wonder, as you contemplate the world’s end,
If you had done well, done right, by your unborn children.
Your womb is no safe place for a child. You know this.
Your womb cannot make life for this life.
This you knew all along.
You told yourself you can’t bear children
That the flesh would not stick for long
With each blood cycle, you told yourself
Is it because you knew, all along
That you don’t want this life that you never did
That somehow you are here, because someone decided
That the time for you has come
By mere coincidence, you are here
And you could’ve never been born
Is it responsibility that you don’t want to assume
Is it the inevitable guilt that you refuse to carry
Like those that came before you, and didn’t know how
You wonder, as you contemplate the world’s end,
what life there is to give
To all those who are already here
Sara Mourad
Sara Mourad is a writer and an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, where she also co-directs the Women & Gender Studies Program. She is interested in questions of identity, deviance, and dissidence in contemporary Arab media and public cultures. She is working on a book about feminist narrative practices and the place of autobiography in identity making and movement building in contemporary Lebanon. Her writings have appeared in a number of journals as well as Jadaliyya, Legal Agenda, Megaphone, and Daraj.
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