To My Seven-Year-Old Daughter, as She Wakes Up

By Jenna Brack
@jennabrackwriting

To My Seven-Year-Old Daughter, as She Wakes Up
from Milan, Italy

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.” – Marilynne Robinson, Gilead [1]

You inhabit a space
where everything is possible.

Of course you don’t know that yet,
eyes falling open and closed,
open and closed,
arm curled under your cheek,
stuffed animal within reach,
today’s challenges ahead
(tangles in your hair,
fighting to be heard over your brother, 
more steps than you 
would like to walk).

Outside this window, 
above your head where I am seeing 
the day before you,
the world opens up its arms. 
Light glazes clay rooftops,
clothes dry in colors across railings,
construction noise mixes 
with birds cooing and busses whirring,
everything blending together
in a beginning.

The rising sun is a new mercy,
youth, another sort of dawn.
I know you are now struggling
to open your eyes, 
I know the world can be unkind and uncertain
but I am here, having crawled 
out of bed just before you,
and as I watch you enter this day
what I see is you 
in the world,
a marvel.

---

Guest poetry written by Jenna Brack. Jenna is a writer, teacher, and celebrator of the arts. Her creative work has appeared in Fathom, Every Day Poems, The Sunlight Press, Mothers Always Write, and others. You can connect with her on Instagram and read her occasional musings on Substack.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

[1] Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.