Got Born

Today we commemorate 

the fact that you got born,

And, perhaps even more miraculously,

have stayed living, 

all this time;

during which 

you have collected a series of experiences,

some universal,

and some unique, quite particular in fact,

to all that is you.

As you developed tastes and preferences,

You migrated toward specific 

pleasures,

textures,

temperatures,

and started to spend disproportionate amounts of 

your time

focused on certain activities

relative to others that were available to you.

You found gravity.

At first you only wrote in pencil

but at some point, 

some person 

gave you a pen,

because they thought you might be ready for it,

and whether you were or you weren’t, 

you figured it out.

You learned not to touch the hot stove,

And then you applied that learning to 

so 

many 

facets

of 

Your life;

sometimes you still have to

relearn that one.

You were loved

and scorned,

You inhaled

and exhaled.

You felt so embarrassed that you thought

perhaps you’d never see the sun again.

But you more than saw it,

You felt it, baby

It scorched you

sweat dimpled off of your skin from it

And it was delightful. 

You brushed your teeth.

You brushed your teeth so many goddamn times!

And to think,

We never even talk about that...

You accumulated connections and some of those connections

became bonds

some of those bonds defied geography-

some of them were geography.

You fell in love with hills and rivers,

Specks of dirt and drops of water

You fell in love with people

And you fell out of it too,

Both sides tinged with pain a little bit

Both sides tinged with pleasure; liberation

You didn’t always understand it.

You didn’t need to. 

You suffered loss;

grief that radiated from the pit of your stomach

to the top of your throat,

a grief that has its own pulse.

People told you it might go away,

but it never has.

You inhale,

You exhale. 

Maybe one day

A person; an entity, or something of that sort

will see the date that you got born

and perhaps even the date that you stopped living

and they’ll understand the broadest contours 

of the time that you survived through;

the political clashes,

the social forces,

the transformations in technology,

the winds and rains that shape a century,

the injustices,

the revolutions,

And you’ll have felt all of it

in your skin,

your bones,

your blood,

your cells.

Isn’t that amazing,

honey?