Sarah Kay

Sometimes someone gets married or has a baby.

Someone teach me a new song, please.

Bring me a spoon and a mouth to lean across the table for this time.

This time I am a jaw of loose teeth.

I am a collection of string.

I am a snow globe of worry.

I am a Rolodex of fear.

They are placing body bags over children on the sidewalk where I once pushed a bowl away laughing.

I cannot possibly have any more love.

I am already full.

It's not very charitable to make someone cry before they go on stage.

Hi, $2 Radio.

Hi, Columbus.

Gosh, you look good.

Instead of mom, she's going to call me Point B. Because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands. So she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, oh, I know that like the back of my hand.

and she's gonna learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach, but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.

Baby, I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick, I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke, so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him. But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix.

Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix, but that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me.

that there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this, my mama said. When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly, and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape.