the last cradle

a poem on the growing childfree by choice movement

If every woman chose herself over life,
the world would not end in fire
but a long, quiet forgetting

no sudden collapse,
no skies tearing open
just classrooms that slowly go empty,
playgrounds turn still and silent,
laughter becomes an echo
that no one replaces

Cities would keep breathing for a while,
lights flickering on and off out of habit,
people aging into memory
with no one new to inherit their stories.

no first steps, no new names,
no small hands reaching for meaning:
just the last generation
carrying everything humanity ever was,
knowing it ends with them

and what would vanish first
would not be numbers,
but love
the instinct to nurture,
to teach, to pass something forward

Art would feel heavier,
love more urgent and more fragile,
because every moment would know
it has no continuation

Until one day,
the world is still full of everything we ever built:
books, music, language, memory,
but empty of the one thing
that made it matter:

someone new
to feel it for the first time

~ A