She is too big. And too tiny.
Babies are weird, because time with them is both long and short and they seem both young and old and mysterious and familiar.
Because my children are such a strange phenomenon to me, I think one of the best things I can do is write poems for them. I want to remember how surreal this time is, how fleeting, how surprising.
For my daughter
You aren't real.
You're from a dream of mine,
a memory of a future that used to be
unattainable,
far-off and ever-changing
like the many professions I aspired to.
My visions of adulthood,
as real to me as the costume jewelry in our dress-up box,
never included the words "my daughter."
A daughter was somehow
a strange thing,
an impossible thing.
How could I muster dreams of a you
that would inevitably be
so like me?
I'd have to know you,
really know you,
nose-to-nose.
It makes sense now
how you seemed not to fit then
before I knew your shape existed.
Discovering you was like
finding a Delorean in a parking lot.
I say the words
"my daughter" now
and they're shaped like you--
just the thought of your smiling cheeks,
so jolly, so soft
like tiny flans
and I could cry about the you
that is somehow both real
and everything I ever wanted
without knowing what I wanted was
you.
