I’ve followed you my whole life. Mother, some call it beautiful. But I saw how you declined to reach down and feel for me, too inside your own pain. I watched how your eyes were closed the whole time to what thousands of strangers have seen, my blue beginning.

Do you wonder what it all might have been like had we not wanted knowledge, or fruit, had we not wanted want? Imagine if I’d been born in a garden with the jays and jaguars gathered to greet me. Imagine reaching for me—I, your worker bee, I, a girl in a species they say is headed for extinction.

Your choosing me was a business decision after all. An investment in your future and followers who, watching me emerge, couldn’t doubt you meant business. Couldn’t doubt you were the real, raw deal.

Mother, you said creating me was mindless. Your expertise was in content (not to be confused with contentment). You said creation should be creative. I won’t start with generations/generative. No one wants to be here all day.

Policy-makers ask: if PTO won’t make me want to be a mother, what will? A yard, to start. A place to send children forth into mud and buds and beets and branches and I need do nothing but sit with my guiltless thoughts. You think I’m kidding. I’m not asking for the moon, just a garden. Or, I guess, better urban planning. Not a car in sight. Nothing to forbid.

Mother, there were never any children in the garden. Mother, the first sons killed each other over jealousy. The first daughters aren’t even mentioned. Mother, I’ve watched the recording you posted of my birth again and again but it doesn’t feel like an origin story so much as a bid. I wonder if we entered into a contract, you and I. I wonder if I have any right to be sad. Stones don’t mind being shared. Birds don’t mind being watched (I am a bird).

Mother, angels guard the entrance. Mother, I am blue. Mother, I might have been anyone, and still strangers had me memorized before you opened your eyes to name me.