Ìmọ́lẹ̀wá

child of sorrow, cradled in light.

I was going to abort it.
This child of sin, of violation.
This child I never asked for.

I was ready to get rid of it because I had my whole life ahead of me. I was supposed to graduate from the aviation academy. I was supposed to become a pilot. I was supposed to return home one day, stand in front of papa, and show him everything I had achieved. I imagined myself telling him the truth he never wanted to hear, telling him how his violence and gambling addiction wounded us, how his drinking turned our home into a battlefield, how he stopped being the man who once took us to the beach every Sunday.

I still remember that papa. The papa who lifted us onto his shoulders so we could see the horizon better. The papa who told us we could be anything we wanted to be. The papa who bought us new clothes every time we came first in class. The papa who loved us with a gentleness that made the world feel safe.

When mama died, everything went downhill. Papa began disappearing. Sometimes for a night. Sometimes for two. Sometimes for a week or a month. And when he returned, it was like a ghost had borrowed his body. He moved through the house without speaking, without seeing us, without remembering that we were children who still needed a father. Some nights he shouted at shadows. Some nights he cried in the dark. And some nights he threw his grief and rage at us, as if breaking us could put him back together.

So when that man forced himself on me, when he shattered something inside me that I have never been able to name, I could not tell papa. I knew it would either destroy him completely or ignite something violent. Either way, I would lose him again.

Then the pregnancy came like a sentence. A punishment. A mark across my life that reminded me of a night I tried every day to forget. I wanted it gone. I wanted my body back. I wanted my future back. I wanted the version of myself who still had wings, the girl who believed the sky was waiting for her.

I told myself I was doing the right thing. I told myself it was not wrong to save myself. I told myself that I did not have to carry a child born from so much darkness.

But then one morning, without thinking, I placed my hand on my stomach. It was still flat. Still quiet. But I felt something. Not movement. Not words. Just a presence. A small, stubborn life that did not ask to be here, but was here anyway.

And something in me cracked open.

At first it was anger. Sharp, burning anger at the world. At what was done to me. At how quickly my life was taken out of my hands. At how unfair it all was. But beneath that anger came something I did not expect. Something soft. Something terrifying. Something that felt like belonging.

I do not know what this child will become. I do not know if I will be enough. I do not know if I can love someone who arrived through pain.

But I know this.
I was going to abort it.
I was.

Yet now, keeping this child feels like the first real choice I have made for myself in a very long time.

her name would be Ìmọ́lẹ̀jádeninuokuku. meaning light has come out of darkness.

And i will water her destiny until she flourishes beyond comprehension.