I own nothing.

I don't ask for much. I just ask to tell my story.

Listen. Just listen. Judge me innocent or guilty, absolve me or condemn me, but listen.

They say history is written by the victors. Maybe this is true. But they forget, history is written by the mothers as well. Those who have lost something to time and eternity.

Yes, I consider myself a mother. You would have been a year old today. Every day I wake up and you, my brilliant-eyed beauty, would have been a day older. I never forget that. It remains with me and will until some benevolent absolution. It will hang about my form until I hear your sweet voice forgiving me.

Science dictates that such is not possible, but I know better. I wake up sometimes, and I swear I feel your small body curled in mine.

I want your forgiveness. I want to know that I did what I had to.

We all do what we have to and we live with the consequences. The world is filled with if only and maybe. If only he hadn't been absent, if only he hadn't come home, maybe it would have been different, maybe things would have changed.

But if I lived in if only then you, my particular you, would never have happened. In if only, I would probably still be left in New York.

I did what I had to. I needed my husband.

My mind accuses me of needing him more than I needed you. Maybe that's true. I don't think so. I thought I did, but now… Now it's irrelevant.

I did what I had to, don't you understand? He was my everything. My everything and my nothing all at once. In him, I found peace. In him, I found torment. He was my world, my rock, my shelter. He was everything to me.

And you, you who was so very new to me, you could give me nothing that I wanted. You could give me a life with a man I couldn't look at. I saw nothing of the world in your eyes. Your eyes that I hadn't seen.

If I had looked in your eyes, could I have seen the world? I think so. You were my baby, my everything, my nothing.

I did what I had to and nothing more. I couldn't look at him. You have to understand. He wasn't faithful, and I was hardly faithful to anything but memory. I couldn't look at him, and I couldn't see you in him.

You were never a mistake. I was the mistake. I am a mistake. One mistake, looking for forgiveness, never finding anything but an exhaustion of guilt. Maybe I'm not guilty, but I will never be innocent.

Would I feel better had things happened as I wanted them to? If I could have won back my world? There is only one person who could possibly know that, and you're drifting through the universe, completely apathetic to my questions.

There can only be one answer from you. You were. You never lived, but you died. In death you were marked by life, and in life you were marked by death. In life, I am marked by guilt, and in death maybe I'll be marked by innocence. For in dying, we all obtain an innocence not given in life.

I can't die now though. For who will remember you if I'm gone?

Happy birthday, my everything, my nothing, my first and last. And if you can find it in your small heart to give some sign of absolution to your repentant mother, please refrain.

I long for your forgiveness, but I have yet to deserve it.

-Juli-