To the little girl on the stairs

My sweet girl,

I want so badly to save you. I see you there, hands on hips and full already of the sass that will color your life, and I want to cry for the bombs that will hit you. Especially, I want to cry for the ones you will set in the ground with your own determined hands. They will take out your legs from under you and maul your face, and one day you will hardly know who you are.

That man across the street? I don't want him to come out with his flare gun, drunk and stumbling, on a night when your parents have left you alone. Your mama? I do not want her to leave.

I want to do it for you. I want to be the mother. I want to whip you into shape and laugh at your jokes and make you feel safe again. I want to carry you through your life and say, No, not him, and I want you to see me standing between your precious tiny body and all those seeping men, absolutely certain that none of them will ever touch you; that I would beat them to the ground with doubtless satisfaction if they so much as leaned your way.

That would be easy to give.

There is something else, though. Something I can't give you, even in fantasy. Something I can't give the boys you will one day bear.

I cannot give you the love of a father. I can't adore you with a man's solid heart, no matter how badly you may need it. I look at you there, with that giant gaping hole, and it kills me that I cannot fill it. That I could scream and beg and tear my bones out for you, and still this thing you need so badly does not exist inside me. I can no more make you whole than I can ever actually touch you, ever hold your struggling limbs in my strong, adult, vibrant arms.

I don't know how to save us. I am afraid we are crippled, you in your corduroy skirt and unloved hair, me in my desperate pushing against the invisible layer around me. I look at you, and I see a child no one could love. A child too angry, too scared of what is coming, to capture anyone's heart.

I know how hard you will fight. And you will win, hard. But some things can't be gotten that way. Some things are made worse by the struggle.

I wish you could be soft. I wish you could sit down on the stairs and open your hands, and someone would come to you and say that you are the most beautiful girl in the world. But you can't be. Because no one will. And so you will build yourself an iron determination, and a sharp tongue, and a fierceness that sucks people in and spits them out. And all the time, you will be waiting. Waiting until it is no longer yours to bear.

Stop waiting. Let go. Drop everything and lay down in the the grass and spread forget-me-nots across your face. It has been years, decades, and you have made me into a woman. Now it is my turn.

You will grow up to be beautiful and brave. You will run through the woods in the thick of summer, will be gifted at words and languages and dancing and climbing and, most of all, at touch. You will give birth, and your friends will say that your howls sound like the Muslim call to prayer. You will love righteously and stupidly and with all the poetry of your body.

You will be strong. So strong that the fighting can stop. So strong that, instead of screaming for the things you need, you can simply pick them up.

You are the most beautiful girl in the world. And you are mine.