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The Gift
I am not a wordsmith’s daughter.
I was not born in breathless song, or wrapped
in a blanket of words, soothing my new soul.
I was born in daylight, with no storm in sight,
no beautiful prophecy. A man did not
stand by my cradle and whisper beautiful phrases
in my ear.
And I did not soak them up, was not fed by their
richness and liveliness.
I spent my days in solitude, mixing
words with play and laughing as they created
nonsense after nonsense.
No beauty was in them,
because I was not a wordsmith’s daughter.
I did not breath out words that leapt
across space and time, or words that
burned and tore at the heart. I could not place them down
so they could dance and fly.
I had to coax them gently,
encouraging them on, and building the flames
That pushed them forward, forward
always forward.
I was not a wordsmith’s daughter, but I became
a mother to words.
Fed them bits of me, and let them sleep until
I placed them on inkwhite paper, where I blew gently
on their flames, turned them ’round, and watched them
open up to the new world.
because there was never any gift, never a beautiful
spell placed on a tiny newborn child.
There were never prophecies that spoke of greatness, no
Tales of those who spun words as easily as breathing.
There was never a wordsmith’s daughter,
no beautiful gift,
but there was always the story
of a girl who fell in love
with words on pages,
and dreams in her mind,
with stories never told . . .
and so, she began to
write.
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