You scare them.

 

With your big blue eyes that have

seen so little yet

know so much.

 

With your wild hair and untamed heart.

 

You are a game-changer.

A rule-breaker.

 

You scare them:

 

The ones who have forgotten how to share.

 

The ones whose games are quiet

and contained

and mean.

 

They watch you rise up like a wave

and seek to drown you in the surging seas,

to poison the air you breathe.

 

You scare them.

 

They watch you play,

and they suffocate under the worlds of

possibilities you uncover with ease.

 

They want to put you in a cage:

to tell you white is black and black is white.

 

And if you fight

against this slow

decline

from

grace

 

they will tighten the shackles

until you capitulate.

 

But you do not need to be afraid.

 

Because they fear us, too

(Maybe even more than you).

 

We are the mothers and the makers,

The hug-givers and the paradigm-shakers,

The nappy-changers and the risk-takers.

 

The heiresses of a different truth

carried on the breeze of

midnight feeds and the inconsolable

screams of an indignant infant thrust

from the safety of my womb into

 

this world.

 

I will not let it swallow you.

 

We will not let them shrink your spirit

however hard they try to keep us down –

to distract us with the

daily struggle

of

surviving.

 

You have shown me a part of myself

that is fierce and raw.

 

Smashing through

the last remaining remnants

of my prison of pretence,

of penitence,

with your unrepenting innocence.

 

Rewilding my brain,

strewing mycorrhizal spores

to create an invisible forest

of support.

 

For years they tried to tether this

matriarchal force

to the kitchen sink.

 

And when that failed they used

the lure of equality to sever those

bonds that bring us to the brink

of power:

 

they tore you from our breasts

 

they convinced us to ignore your cries

until something deep inside

 

broke

 

ready to be filled with substitutes

that

line their pockets

and keep us

weak.

 

My liberation cannot come at the price of your oppression.

 

They say that we must go

our

separate

ways

so that the world turns as it should.

 

But know this:

 

There is not a single promise they can make

that would persuade me

to let go of your hand,

dear one.

 

You scare them.

 

But you make me strong.