notes to my future daughter

1. someday you’ll ask why your daddy and i are different colours — not because you ever noticed, but because someone else did. i’ll have to explain to you that the electromagnetic spectrum is thousands of kilometers and we’re just little parts of it and love is colour blind even though nothing else is. 2. the first time you look at a billboard and understand the lettering will be the best moment in your life. i promise i will teach you the parts of speech: you are a verb. your actions are adjectives. your thoughts are nouns. your life is one long sentence you will never fully understand. 3. one day you will wake up after the worst day of your life and wonder how there is a day after. there will be a day after. there will also be a week, and a year, and a lifetime after. your pain will not be beautiful and it will not stop the planets and you will realize there is more to you than yourself and that’s exactly how it should be. 4. you can be anything you want (i promise the only people who say otherwise are people who have already decided they want to be assholes). 5. one day i will make you look at your hand for part of you exploded into the sky before anyone had dreamed up science. you were a tongue of fire that sliced up the galaxies and exploded a thousand times over into the celestial bodies. you will feel your body explode a thousand times over and somehow, despite that, you will still make a universe of all your recycled matter. 6. some day you will hate me and you will scream and beat your fists against every wall of every house of every home your father and i will try to build. you will bleed questions and sob apologies and you will ask why. the only answer there is is that some day you will see it’s worth it.