Oh, did I kill you child?
“Child.”
Is it right to speak the word?
Though thick with tears, I am complicit.

My child, murdered with scientific sight,
was a person half formed, but a being not quite,
with tiny hands, feet but no breath, or sight.

Was it our child, ultrasounded,
that was either happily or unknowingly wriggling
in mum-womb’s universe until,
the drug-induced daylight,
that was the night?

We called you Danny, anyway.
Light winged dryad of the trees,
Danny, who was here but never knew.

We’ll bury your tiny body
with a doll-sized hat and blanket
in the allotment,
beside your sister’s placenta.

I will hold hands with your mother – we are just children too,
and we know not,
except what we knew.

In the hope that this instead will fruit
Danny, we plant a tree on you.