Your Gift

Your Gift
by Cassie McDaniel

You pinned me down and gave me something

I didn't know I needed –

Short glances, respectful naked distance

laughter after the gun smoke and sounds

glorious sounds: like television

I move past the despise and learn more

about loving life than I had ever loved in practice.

So you gave me sound and told me to sit still

While I filled every available cavity with dark

rich soil. Planted seeds and waited. “Grow grow grow”

we together chanted. You played the ukulele

in gentle insistence. Something

crept upward, the solid nut, the noun, the core,

and lodged forever in the hollow of my hands.