It follows through iridescent dreams.

It stares and it lingers.

It watches with saddened but dead eyes.

Sometimes you'll see it, most times you won't.

But either way, it is always there. Even when you awake from the nightmare, it remains.

Can you remember holding it?

Do you remember smiling as it giggled in your arms?

Do you think of it staring back at you as you lightly feel its soft skin?

No. Because you never did.

You never watched it take its first steps.

Heard it cry in the middle of the night.

Clean up after the mess that it had caused.

Or hear it call for you.

And now you never will.

Do you regret that day? That choice that you made?

Do you wonder to yourself what might have been?

If only that child was here today and you could tell it that you would love it and protect it.

Would you?