The birth of a fawn,

of a new life stumbling into consciousness -

unsteady legs,

blurred mind.

This is the place from which I have never awoken.

 

All those millennia ago

fighting my way out of the Mud Womb,

the dirt smothering me and my siblings.

I had plants to change the world,

and I did - for the worse.

I should have let myself drown.

 

Yet I survived, and found that vast desert,

and those delicate humans within,

They were too precious, too fragile,

in need of a mother’s touch.

But a mother I was not.

 

I tried, I truly did,

to nurture them and make them bloom.

But how could I have expected a naive fawn

to carry the responsibilities of the graceful doe?

 

There are rules to nature -

a cycle of life and death

endless in its infamy.

This is why the noble deer does not wallow in tears

when her young is taken,

for she understands.

 

But I?

I would not let my children die.

And yet, I am but a child,

a fawn who cannot walk on her own,

cannot understand the cruelty of the world.

And for my ignorance,

all which I love has been doomed to suffer,

forever.