By Anne Fricke
We gave her the name of a goddess
to hell with genetics
burn society’s expectation that a person need
all of their 15th chromosome
She follows in the footsteps of divinity.
We gave her the name of a goddess
the night I thought we would lose her
when she fell so deeply asleep in my arms
I heard gate bells ringing above
Her body limp, quiet,
her spirit, still,
We were alone, this frail being and I,
A seasoned mother, new to the complications
Of complications, fluid poured from my body,
Tears of fear and grief, milk from unlatched breasts,
She was so weak my own body, the body that grew her,
could not revive her
It was Dia de Los Muertos,
the time of Samhain,
We were at the threshold,
My daughter could easily have slipped away,
stepped unnoticed to the other side
She needed a name to call her back!
A name to hold on to,
She needed us to fortify her
with the call of heaven, the songs of warriors,
burrow those ballads into that tiny empty space on her DNA
Fill the missing gap on her chromosome with a name
so powerful the gods would have to listen,
Let me keep her longer with me,
Sing the lullabies of our Gaelic ancestors to grow her roots,
Carry her amongst the ancient trees of our adopted homeland,
Sit in the garden and taste the sweetness of fresh, ripe tomatoes,
There was still so much to do together,
We needed to call her into existence,
Infuse her spirit with the strength of a Warrior Goddess so
when the world tries to defeat her, when peers turn away,
when life gets harder, society doesn’t understand her, and
her life forges down the path of her genetics,
She will have a warrior’s gait, a goddess’s stride
She will face her challenges as any Deity
of Love and Beauty, Battle and Death can
We gave her the name of a goddess,
She has claimed it as her own.
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