Midnight comes,
and the calendar turns
like it hasn’t done anything wrong.
October seventeenth.
The world is asleep,
but somewhere inside me
a woman is still becoming a mother
to a little girl
she will have to learn
how to love without holding.
Eleven years.
I have lived whole lives
since the day you were born.
I have packed lunches,
washed blankets,
kissed scraped knees,
survived things I never imagined,
and held your siblings
through their own small heartbreaks.
But every October,
I find the girl I was
before I understood
that a birthday
could also be an anniversary
of the worst goodbye.
Tonight,
I will not rush past the ache.
I will let your name
fill the rooms
you never got to grow into.
I will let myself remember
that before the grief,
before the silence,
before the world learned
to speak of you in past tense—
there was you.
MaKenna.
And this day
belonged to you
before it ever belonged
to my sorrow.
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