Seeds

This is sort of about adoption, but it's also about all the other lives I see thrown away every day...

"Seeds"

She matters.
Though she’s torn on the edges,
and folds down low,
groping for words,
like a child who has fallen off a swing
looking for the breath
that will not come.

He waits -
with more potential
than the handful of seeds I
planted in the black, soft garden soil.
Seeds three years dormant,
that grew inside a fruit
grown by my grandfather.

Those seeds rose with green hands
waving toward the sky.
A gospel choir
celebrating life.
Life that began in darkness
and overcame it.

Each day a new swarm of faces
Shifts and blurs before my next step
like road signs passing by a car window.

Sometimes the memories
behind those faces have shaped their eyes
enough for me to translate.

Too often convention
restrains what rises -
that universal mother instinct
that runs onto the playground mulch,
awkward in sandals upon shifting earth -
drawn close to the pain,
to touch the hurt with you.

You forget that you matter.
Because Cruelty and Oversight
link hands around you
and taunt you singing:

“Worthless. Forgotten.
Damaged. Discarded.
Tomorrow will hate you
And Yesterday will haunt you.
As it was for you,
and as it is,
always it shall be.”

It’s a poison. And it’s a lie.

You matter.
Chosen.
Designed.
Knit together by Intentionality -
Who calls us up through darkness
toward the light.

Two small hands,
then four,
then six -
born reaching into pain.
Learning to grow through it.
learning to walk
learning to be carried
toward the morning
of your new name.