I am still processing love

a father’s story offering a truth

different from the one I was raised on

I am still processing trust

and the belief in words

I am learning how to weave

a new history and to embrace

the parts that are broken

Time teaches not all things

will come back together

Union is a splitting of cells

that collapse into life

fumbling to find a self

I hold my belief in threads

my hands weaving something new

I can’t tell you about endings

the story is still being written

each line bends through me

working its way to the heart

This poem was inspired by a conversation I had with my birthfather yesterday while we spoke about the stories inside and around my memoir, A Girl Named Truth. “In the photograph,” he told me, “I look young, but I think you can see that I’m not disappointed that you were a girl. I’m really sorry about your middle name. It’s not that I still wanted you to be a boy. I chose it because it is Gaelic and I thought it had to do with the earth, and you’re a Virgo.”