Four

(I cut a few parts out for personal accuracy—but the poem in its entirety is also beautiful. I want to give this to my daughter.)

Daughter by Nicole Blackman

One day I'll have a tiny baby girl
and when she's born she'll scream
and I'll tell her never to stop.

I will kiss her before I lay her down at night
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive.

I'll tell her that people must earn the right
to use her nickname,
that forced intimacy is an ugly thing.

I'll help her to see that she will not find God
or salvation in a dark brick building
built by dead men.

I'll make her keep reinventing herself and run fast.
I'll teach her to write her manifestos on cocktail napkins.
I'll make her understand that she is worth more with her clothes on.
I'll teach her to talk hard.

I'll teach her that she has an army inside her
that can save her life.
I'll teach her to be whole, to be holy.
I'll teach her how to live,
to be so much that she doesn't even
need me anymore.

I will make her stronger then I ever was.

"It's a fine thing to establish ones own religion in ones own heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you later, not a lesser, but a greater thing." -D.H. Lawrence

"Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
--Wuthering Heights

^this makes me miss the stoop so much.
I dont even know how my attachment to it got to be so excessive
Maybe its because, despite the mosquitoes eating us alive, or the fact that it was 3AM, people would still come over and just talk.
or maybe its just the people I'm so attached to

^Tree above the stoop.

“For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to behold it…”

-Ivan Panin, Russian Mathematician

“and all the while the conversation was at once meaningless and meaningful--the sort that holds no other purpose then to relish in the sound of a beloved's voice.”

"Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life."

--Langston Hughes, from Theme for English B