I told myself I wouldn’t be a poet who writes about birds or sunsets. How hard could it be? Everyone has seen a sunset. No one has seen God. When Jesus stood before the sunset, he thought about dying. When I stood before the sunset, the dead grass at my feet seemed less ridiculous than the electricity poles across the water. Clouds were suspended like rough yellow fibers, strips that composed the horizon and, differently, the ice, and, differently, the waves. Anne Bradstreet said she’d worship nature if she didn’t know better. She, the blue wishing she were yellow. I too am attempting worship. The fact that I’ve made life still doesn’t make me feel anything, I suppose because it didn’t feel like I was doing anything. I was in pain, mostly. The sunset would strike me differently if I were in pain. I’d be less flippant. In the brief years I imagined myself an intellectual, I dabbled in Wittgenstein and poststructuralism and still believed God had chosen language as the tool to save us—I drank from both cups. Language was fruitful and fruitless simultaneously. Sometimes I wonder how Jesus acquired creativity and critical thinking. How does a toddler manage exploration without ruin, when does creation become ruin become sin, wonder how other poets manage to write about God, manage earnestness. My confirmation verse was the one about God working all things for good—I was in puberty, which makes sense—but the verse that has seen me into my childbearing years is the one the man says over his dying son—Lord I believe, help me overcome my unbelief. And I want to be saved. When I took all the baby clothes out of storage they were ruined all that spat up milk staining the fibers yellow no hope all of it ended up in the trash though the internet told me to try a bathtub of Oxyclean I thought I could write about God about substance and God beauty. I wanted to write a poem to end with Solo Deo Gloria the way my theatre professor ended all his emails, but nothing I say feels beautiful or pure enough and why would you ever hold a mirror to a sunset?

Look, I am not gentle. Look, the boy at the lake threw away the sandbag propping up the sign Warning Thin Ice Stay Off Lake while I was looking, wrestled it up and let it go it over the lip of the trash can, then lifted his arms in an aggressive shrug, like he wanted to fight, or scare me. He was probably ten, to be clear. I was with my two toddlers. What, he yelled to me across the sand pit of spring animals, and I said nothing. What, he said. My face was a stone. I pushed my children on the swings. On the way home, we passed a pair of crutches propping up a tree in someone’s yard. Beside it, a piece of driftwood worn into a huge pencil or javelin was planted in the dirt like a trunk and encircled with rocks, a gesture which, I learned from our local Lawns to Legumes Program, signals to your neighbors your intentions. Look, even I know a lost cause when I see one. Careful. When you look, then you’ll have to pay us.

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.