Your father belongs to the sky.
He skims the bottom of clouds and keeps
a watchful eye on everything below.
Sometimes he spreads thin and you almost
cannot see him, or he dances just out of view
on the breath of the wind, but he’s always there.
Other days, he’s large, dark or bright,
and people can’t help but
lay in the grass and watch, imagining, guessing
at what he is, at how he takes the
insubstantial and makes it something
remarkable.
Your mother belongs to the ground. Roots and
Earth, solid and constant—but not immovable,
not invulnerable to tremors and collapse.
She has spent years looking up and imagining,
guessing at what life would be like without two feet
firmly planted. She has climbed mountains and trees,
skipped or jumped to taste a moment of flight.
She reached as high as she could stretch for the hint
of such excitement as the sky.
One day,
the sky (remarkably)
reached back.
And then there was you.
You are l i g h t n i n g,
born from the stretch between clouds and Earth.
A flash of bright in the middle of a storm.
You are electric, charged—a sudden boy with flashes
that people count down to.
You are the taste of static in the air and the feeling of
every hair standing on end. You are impossible odds and
chance, warmth so unbelievable it could be nothing less than
fire, racing through veins and leaving a shock of shining,
purple scars in your wake. Tracing them feels like a
memory of you.
Have you ever seen someone struck by lightning?
Just look at your parents and the buzz that hums through them,
every time you smile.
