I Write Poems for My Daughter Who Can't Read Yet
She's two. The poems are for later.
My daughter is two. She cannot read. She cannot hold a pen. She can say 'mama' and 'water' and a word that might be 'moon', and that is the whole of her language, and I write poems for her anyway.
They are in a notebook on the shelf above her crib, the same shelf where I keep the things I want her to have when she is old enough to want them. The poems are not for now. They are for the daughter she will be, the one who will be able to read them and know what it was like to be her father when she was small.
I write about the way she holds a crayon, like it is a tool for building something important. I write about the way she says 'moon' at the window every night, the same window, the same word, like she is greeting a friend. I write about the specific weight of her on my shoulder when she falls asleep, the way her breath slows and her hand opens and the whole day goes quiet.
I don't know if she will read them. I don't know if she will want to. But I know that the person she will be is the person I am writing for, and the poems are the record of the person she was when I was writing them.
Some nights I read them to her anyway, out loud, the way I would read to a person who could understand. She doesn't understand the words, but she understands the voice, and the voice is the part that matters. The poems are not for her ears; they are for her memory, the one she is building even now, the one that will hold the sound of her father reading to her before she could hold the meaning.
She will read them when she is ready. I will be here when she does. The poems are the bridge between now and then, and the bridge is the point.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
Similar Stories
Keep reading in the Writory Library
Enter a Writory poetry contest