It's fool's day, and I'm thinking of the first heartbeat
my body has shuddered.
Skin smoothed from an embryo and into the form of a human being;
I was ushered into this world 12 and 8 years late
to two parents who rose their white flags by the time I was 10
and two siblings who had endured their fair share of the family fortune: traumatizing memories and the gene pool of mental illness.

I used to think it was a farse; this "life" thing.
I believed I was sent here by mistake,
as my mom often told me I was the "surprise" to her.
I came home on Father's Day and 17 years later, my father disappeared.
But I'll remember how he and my mom formulated the lives of 3 human beings, now on completely separate paths,
and how beautiful life became on our own accord.

We're often taught that blood is thicker than water,
and that your family are your first role models.
They teach you about the world before you get the chance to be taught by the world itself.
So what they're saying must be significant, right?

No matter the pain that has been struck on me
since that heartbeat,
I'll forgive.  It's the only way to make a second.
And as the blood trickles from my flesh,
on my dying bed, I'll reminince about my first breath, as I breathe my last.