(For my orchid babies)
I’ve never known the answer to childhood
questions like what do you want to become
when you grow up? Not in a way others just knew
they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, businessmen –
noble professions, set in the ways of their inheritance.
When the question came around to me, I mumbled,
“A rainforest tree? Or, or, David Attenborough’s voice.
No, Crocodie Hunter!”
“You can’t be made in another’s afterimage, love,
you have to find your own calling.” Titanium plate bolted
on his femur, dear teacher recalls days
of his athletic potential when he feels no one
is watching. I am partial to morbidly delicate nature
and delicately morbid too. No wonder my first instinct
to become a rainforest tree, that leisurely Icarian
thing on which orchids grow safe. I am that tree.
Cover image by Crystal Mirallegro on Unsplash
