Falling Into Being

Falling into Being

You, you with the clovers in your hair, your braided sun beams.
Flowers and winged things. How you’ll never know the species of them, but you know
them by their colors–their tiny reflected sunlights. You call them cousins by their hues:
this one is robin red, this one is lily white. You touch them with your bluebird eyes.

What is the final truth, then? Is it that they live, that there’s beauty in existing as you
are?

Before the sun had risen, you cupped your hands around your mouth and whispered
to the spiraled bud of a morning glory: why will you bloom? No answer until the
morning, and then it unfurled its petals; its greeting to the day, to a lifetime. You sat
and watched this little being bloom with the magnificence of purpose. It was beautiful
in its silence, in its pride. You gave it the honor of breathing softly, of acknowledging
its vulnerability. You knew it was weaker, less protected as a softly petaled bloom than
as a bud. You saluted its courage.

And when it died in the dusk of fading lights and fading colors, you stood in reverence
as you do at the funeral of a man who lived well. Shed a tear but smiled in acceptance
of a gift you never intended to receive.

And by morning, you had discerned the colors of yourself. You had fallen into being.

Kaitlyn Elkins