Don’t grow up.
Grow down,
deep into this earth.
So deep you forget what part of your body your heart belongs in.
Be nothing except wet earth.
Be an open mouth. Be a seed.
Be every language our ancestors ever spoke.
Be a dialect ten thousand years old, and still breathing.
You woke up one morning and asked me,

“Am I pretty?”

Please be spring.
Be new blossoms and the way the ground smells after rain.

My mother came to me and told me we were giving you away.
Before you had even taken your first breath,
she said we couldn't do this.
Take care of another baby, when our backs were already broken. Poverty was a ***** word we shared sheets with.
I told our mother, that you were already ours.

That you could never really belong to anyone else.

And we kept you.

And when you were born, you had these eyes.
These, ocean kissed sky, and slept all night, kind of eyes.
These eyes that told me that we all come from the same place.

These eyes that said
“Ive been here before.
Ive done this already.
Get ready for this.
Watch me.”

And you’re eight years old now, with a broken leg, and you've been screaming for two months.

And I cried the day the car hit you.
And I laughed when you woke up.

And you’re eight years old, and I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

This cocky, loud, screaming mess.
This spaghetti stained, angry little monster.
This bully, who swallows her own meanness.
You've got a venom about you kid.
A house set on fire, inside you, kinda crazy,
sometimes I can even smell the smoke.

I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

And I wanna tell you,

You don’t owe anyone beauty.

You aren't in in-debt to some universal credit collector.
You don’t owe anyone make up, or 40$ worth of hair product.

You are the best kind of disaster.
You are laughing until you cry, and secrets you promise to keep but never do.
You are irrevocably yourself, and no one else,
and

******* It Little Girl,

You are beautiful.
The best kind of beautiful.

But I am afraid.
Afraid of what 8 years looks like, when it meets ten, and four more. When you’re tall enough to see your reflection in the bathroom mirror.

What you will do to yourself.

I pray to God.
I pray you meet someone who teaches you to love yourself.
Because I know you are still angry.
Angry at this world, and your life.
Its like you walked into an overcrowded room,
and no one noticed you
and you haven’t let us forget what we owe you.

I pray to God you kiss your fingertips.
Bless them for each meal they give you.
There is nothing more intimate than feeding yourself.
Baby, counting calories is no way to live your life.
There is nothing more ancient than a sunrise.
You are a horizon, a tissue papered sky,
do not cut pieces of yourself away.
You are not ******* gift wrap.

I pray to God you listen to your own voice.
See strength in the way your body never gives up.
That you are Iowa,
illegal fire *******,
set off in our backyard.
You matter to me.
That you are red and blue police sirens.
You will make people nervous.
Get used to it.
You will shake the ground with your voice.
Get used to it.
You are powerful, the way the ocean is powerful,
the way it devours cargo ships,
air craft liners,
churning up lost Atlantis’,
turning stones into sand,
and swallowing this planet slowly.
That you are meant to exist.
Remain.
Endure.
That you are beauty.
That you are billions of atoms.
My solar sister.

You belong to me.  
But baby, you belong to you.
Own this.
Take it,
like a testament,
and write it.
Put it in a box and save it.
Mail it back to your own house, and read it.
Be it.
Breath it.
But please,
please,
don’t ever forget it.

Drowsy,
I gulped you down
like a dark roast coffee.
----------------------------------
Suddenly, I was awake
and you were gone.

I've had days. I've had back room, bare faced, broken days.
I mark them on my calendar with silver stars. And 2013 is starting to look like the night sky
On a crystal canvas.
Beauty from pain. Bitter cliches.
Cliches are cliches for a reason. And not because they're applicable.
Because they are vague.
Because to you it means a Phoenix. A girl reborn.
But to me it means blood that fell on the snow so perfectly
That the drops turned to petals and you saw a rose.
All I saw was red.
I don't know my own mind. Sometimes I feel we haven't met yet.
That she passes me by on the street corners with a smile and a nod but
She doesn't know my bones.
All she's learned to see is cellulite and blood.
I tell her to look at the bone.
The pure inside we have both forgotten.

I've had days. Pill bottle, smoke cloud, red nosed days.
Days that smell like cold fingers. Days that feel like cigarette mittens.
Days that belong next to the fire place with a warm mug.
I've found my eyes lost in ember and the cackle of the flames.
I've felt mocked by the dead and inanimate. But somehow my head stays in place.
I continue on a course of blatant sanity.
I guess I have met my mind. But we don't get along.
She runs fast but tires quickly.  And one of us always lags behind the other.
Like an inconstant tide.

I've had days. Pale faced, smoky eyed, purging days.
Days that sit on street corners hungry. Days that lost their weight.
Days when I wanted to crawl out of my skin to see how it looks from the outside.
It occurs to me that I haven't met my eyes face to face.
I've seen their likeness in glass but never their glow as they caught the ember and filled with tears.
I will never understand my mind or shake her hand and that's fine.
But maybe just once I'd like to meet my eyes.

I've had days. Sun window, pink cheeked, puffy coat days. Days when I remember spring.
Days when I thaw.
Days when my mind and eyes and bones can hold contented hands and understand each other.
I think I'm learning. Learning to meet myself in every mirror glance, every blushing touch, every tear, each awkward giggle.
Perhaps I will be able to face them.
To know my mind without formal introduction.
To meet by bones without seeing their white.
See my eyes face to face without leaving my skin.
And there will be days when I can't.
I've had those days. I've had many days.
Dark room days, glazed eye haze days, cold white winter wet days, warm window welcome days. That's the funny thing about days.
They too never meet.
They pass each other on street corners with a nod and a smile. Forgotten from time and the mind that they
Never met.