My First of Many Days

The world is bright and there is too much that surrounds,

an overwhelming cacophony of sound and light and touch.

My bones are fragile but my heartbeat is strong,

and this is what it means to grow.

We begin so that one day we may end,

and in the middle

we can create.

They call me daughter and I am theirs

as surely as the sun rises in the east,

though I do not yet understand what this means.

Perhaps, neither do they.

They will know me even as I barely know myself,

and in my eyes they will see

what can one day become.

There is a scattering like broken rocks over a bridge,

a whisper that happens when a new day arrives,

and in the sound of it you can see ripples that bleed into water,

break into a million different directions.

These are the choices I will make, many and shifting

but there is a path before me, cleared for those first, hard miles

if I so wish to walk it.

And even as I begin to wander, I will know that I am not alone,

linked to them in the way the reeds beneath the water

twist round one another and sway inside the ocean’s rhythms.

This is the life I was born to and it is a lucky one,

for even on this first day of all my many days,

I already know what sweetness it is

to be loved.