The sword they carry
I didn’t just birth daughters. I birthed flames.
They won’t leave my house empty-handed.
They will leave carrying the sword I placed.
I didn’t become a mother when they were born.
I became a mother the moment they made space inside me.
The moment seed caught hold.
The moment my blood shifted from woman to mother.
The moment my breath wrapped around someone who had not yet arrived.
Each daughter made me.
One came swift and laughing.
Born minutes after we reached the hospital.
I was still at a party the night before, still bouncing on a ball when the doula arrived.
One came slow and fierce.
Umbilical cord looped around her neck.
Born on all fours, caught between two pregnant women helping me birth a third.
One came monumental.
Too vast to pass through the ordinary way.
Cut from my body at 5.1 kilos.
Leaving a wound I still carry.
A wound that waits for full repair.
They split me open.
They carved me wide.
They marked me in blood and in scar and in laughter.
They built the mother I became.
This is not about sacrifice
I don’t tally sleepless nights.
I don’t hoard receipts for early mornings or unpaid labor.
I don’t keep ledgers for meals cooked or bodies held.
For nipples cracked like fingertips caught in doors.
For the months my husband insisted on breastfeeding over formula.
I fucking hated him.
I’m not here asking for recognition.
I sit here because today, they sit beside me.
Whole.
Wild.
Alive.
Laughing and weeping and bursting and burning.
I did not just birth daughters.
I birthed sovereigns.
They will not leave empty-handed
My husband’s mother ran from kitchen, church, children.
She carved a different life before cancer cut it short.
She never had time to raise her sword.
So I picked it up.
I picked it up when I bore girls.
When I stayed.
When I fought for joy instead of duty.
When my daughters leave this house,
they will not leave waiting for a sword.
They will leave armed.
Already raised.
Already wielding.
They will not orbit a man.
They will orbit themselves.
They will cross oceans.
They will take horses at full gallop.
They will fight the battles that belong to them.
They will colour the land with their own hand.
They will not be trophies.
They will be sovereigns.
Because motherhood isn’t sacrifice.
It’s stewardship.
Because they didn’t just come from me.
They built me.
And I raised them to carry the sword.
Author’s Note
Lineage moves through the body long before it moves through time.
Mothers forge daughters, and daughters forge mothers.
The world still counts bodies, tasks, output.
But the field counts something older.
The field counts sovereignty.
Daughters are not seeds to be planted in old soil.
They are metal and marrow.
They are inheritance shaped into blade.
What I carried first, they carry now.
And the sword is already in their hands.
