Dear Daddy,
I am a mother, now,
to a little girl I wish you could meet.
She is day to my night:
an extroversion of my heart,
charging on her own beat.
I sometimes see the me
I used to be before
someone stuffed Proverbs 13:24
down my throat.
Her mien, a memory,
my dreaming self,
before someone welted my skin
with Exodus 20:12.
I wish you could see her
chart courses beyond old scripts.
I wish you could watch
this daring cartographer,
who is all of us, and more,
and who is none of us
that came before.
I send up these prayers,
to you and all our forebears,
for her path to be clear,
for her steps to always fall
in the way that she dares.
For her wanderings
to not be seen as sacrilege,
but as the dedications
of an agile spirit re-emerging,
sorting out her own salvation
in fearless trembling.