In one of my optimistic fantasies
in which I finally am in a position
to have kids, I and my partner have
eight children between us and having
long exhausted my childhood bible
of names – Robin and Martha and
Noelle and Rachel – and presumably
hers too, we look down at our littlest
– and definitely last, this time – girl
and call her Hope.
She would be dark, her hair growing
long and straight with a fringe, unlike
her sisters who would match my curls.
And whilst those sisters would be
precocious and sassy, Hope would
be gentle and sweet, would cope with
her unconventional parental situation,
would deflect the taunts walk with her
head held high and then slip her hand
in mine and say she is happy with her
world.
Maybe I will actually call my first
child Hope.
Elizabeth Gibson is a Masters student at the University of Manchester and a Digital Reporter for Manchester Literature Festival. Her work has been accepted by The Cadaverine, London Journal of Fiction, Far Off Places, Severine, and Ink, Sweat and Tears in the UK and Firefly, Sea Foam, Gone Lawn, Sincerely, and Siblíní in the US. She spent a year teaching English in France, which inspires much of her work. She tweets at @Grizonne, Facebooks at facebook.com/ElizabethGibsonWriterPoet and blogs at elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.co.uk.