to my daughter on the eve of her 13th birthday

A tree grows in Baltimore—

Thirteen times now

it has blossomed,

Stretched toward the sky,

thirteen times I’ve stood underneath

breathless,

asking time to slow down.

They told me: the days are long,

the years are short.

I nodded,

before you,

not knowing a damn thing.

Now I know.

Now it’s carved into my chest.

And for you,

I broke myself open,

I stitched myself back together again.

I stopped calling my body a battlefield.

I learned to stand,

to speak,

to stay,

because you are always watching.

You who won’t bend for foolishness,

who shrugs cruelty off like dust.

“If they don’t want me”

you said once so sure,

“that’s their loss.”

I put the bottle down.

The fear too.

I didn’t want you to find yourself

at the bottom of anything.

I wanted you to see:

facing the dark

is the real magic.

That feeling it all

is how we fly.

I love you,

with a living breathing kind of love—

the kind you have to build and rebuild every day.

Every breath you’ve taken

has folded into my own,

has lit the lanterns in my chest,

has kept me walking forward.

All of it—

the hope, the holding on—

all if it,

is for you.