When I emerged, I knew everything.

I just seemed to know how it all worked from that minute.

I knew the midwife’s wonder,

I knew that the soft pillows of my mother’s arms were home.

I knew I belonged to them, and to everything else in that room.

So I knew it all.

When I started school, I was taught everything.

They said I had the potential to know all there is to know.

I learnt how to write my name, and spell and do my basic sums.

I learnt how earthquakes are made, when the queen was crowned and what others believe about creation.

I yearned to know more, to explore.

So I was taught everything.

When I left home, I wanted everything.

I had a goal, an ambition, a career that’ll thrill me.

I practiced the skill of resilience,

I practiced hard work, commitment, drive.

I didn’t let the jeers of others stand in my way.

I was hungry, I persisted.

So I wanted everything.

When my daughter was born, I was terrified of everything.

I wrapped my gentleness around her and shunned anything that could harm it.

I became her home, her entire support system, her only source of warmth.

I became conscious of evil in the world, that it was there to harm my little girl.

It haunted me.

I was protector.

So I was terrified of everything.

Nowadays, I’m everything.

I sit around a centre from which it all began, amongst everything else.

I’m a small fragment of the universe.

I feel my learning dissipate through the earth.

I trust it does us good. That’s it’s purpose.

I didn’t achieve my goals, so now I’m a traveller without a destination.

I function as part of a whole.

That’s me, that’s everyone.

There’s a sort of happiness in it.