i want to say, ‘my love, keep your chin up’ because she doesn’t yet know that the waves will crash on her bare back, that they’ll drag her to the depths, that her lungs will fill with water, that she’ll be swallowed up by the ocean. 

i want to say ‘little child, you are loved more than you know, if not by people, then by spirits of the earth, by the wind, the trees.’ i want to tell her to preserve her worth, to treasure herself because she is the sun, she is everything.

i want her to know that the ocean will spit her out but perhaps not until its stripped her of all but shreds of her soul. but i need her to know that she will recover; that she will regain herself; that the light in the tunnel is not a train, barreling toward her to crush what remains, but rather the faint rays of a sun that is awaiting her arrival. 

i want to say ‘my child, wrap your arms around yourself, keep close to who you were; it will all pass’

i want to wrap my arms around her. tell her i love her. remind her that she has a future. she has not been forgotten. 

i am ‘her’. i have recovered. not been forgotten. i have a future.