We started on the black hand side
or we started in the delivery room
or we’d barely started.

Barely old enough to feed ourselves, to
locate love on the insides of rib cages,
to know better.

And then you came, slow at first, like a gathering storm
or a seedling or a sapling. Your mother blooming and
my desire to retreat blossoming.

How is it so easy for you and me to switch roles,
I become the child and you the parent?
Sometimes it feels like parenting is constantly bracing

for impact. Other times, a shapeless wilderness,
a waxy moss at the root. I am only wandering.
I don’t know what I have to leave you with.

When you were born, the sound of your coo
carved a crater in me. Your skin flakes worried me,
the scratches on your face frightened me.

But you were only learning yourself, tracing your cheeks
to learn what you were, your new package, all celestial flourish,
tucked away inside cotton and skin.

And now, a person all your own but still full of stars,
I do not own you and I cannot make you stay.

(For Jona and Quest)