Here
Your feet walk.
As the sun rises, your toes feel the red dirt still cold with early dew
As your mother watches your silhouette shimmer and glimmer and disappear.
Girls like you who’ve had to stay home,
Girls like you who’ve dared to believe,
Know it’s your place to weave the future.
With an empty backpack on your shoulders
You walk over boulders like the soldier you are.
You walk into places
You weren’t supposed to make it to.
Teacher calls your name,
You say, “I am here.”
The world hangs before you on a dry yellow map
You see fantastic blues
Magentas,
Oranges
and black.
Empty places for you to explore
And why not you to discover their stories
Why not you to reclaim what is rejected?
Bring magic where least expected.
You take the dreams your mother buried deep and
Each day you whisper that you will
Uncover every single one.
Because for you they were never dreams
They are your future.
By Jeanette Rawlins
