To the daughter that I may someday have:
In the mornings, we will go for a walk.
I will show you the symmetry in the lilies
The funny way the light refracts in the pond.
I will teach you the dance of the bees, so you can dance with them.
In the afternoons, we will eat our lunch.
I will show you to marvel at how you are eating sunlight when you eat your spinach, (even if you hate it).
I will point at the portraits of the women that came before you,
That made space at the table for your high chair and stained bib.
We will also nap, and I will show you how to listen to the gentle hum from within your own cells
In the evenings, we will build.
We can build sandcastles or fusion reactors or anything you like.
You can have juice and I will have coffee at our tea party with all the girls in lab coats and goggles
At night, I will hold a telescope to your small eye
So you can say goodnight to the satellites
And on the nights that it rains endlessly,
We can look at your glow-in-the-dark stars instead.
I hope like your mother you will come to see,
That math is the most ancient poetry of the universe
And physics is the song the atoms in your chest sing to each other
That each time you cook, you are doing chemistry
And you my darling, are the most beautiful creation of biology.
But if when you grow up
You don’t want books with equations with funny symbols and hexagons and big words
I will pick you up so you can reach the top shelf and choose your own new favourite book.
Whatever you choose,
I hope you will always lift your sisters up,
Stand with machetes beside them when the time comes,
Share your blanket when it gets cold,
And remember
The portraits of the women that came before you
Are always looking over you.
