Before you got here, you were a constellation
visible only in the southern hemisphere.
I could not travel that far; I could not find you.
You were a favorite song that hadn’t been written.

Months and years passed without your face.
Test after test said, “negative,”
like a bad grade, a disappointing failure,
an essay I couldn’t seem to get right.

All the while the people around me
remained as inaccessible as a sunset,
and your absence lived inside me like a secret,
like a cloud over the moon, like an admonition.

Then I felt your warm heart in my belly.
I heard the galloping of a thousand horses
bringing me the gift I thought I lost forever,
bringing me an open door to life.

Now that you are here, stacking toys and Cheerios
on the floor in my warm office, while outside
snow falls from the trees; I realize that the waiting,
the hunger, and the pain were all part of your story, our story.

Eventually we get to the other side of the earth,
look at the sky, and realize how far we have come.
We see that love is all that matters,
and that we all write our own songs as we go.