The Earth Has Already Counted You
It inscribed you before you had a name—
Moira, Joy, Agbeni, Oiza, Saratu.
Whoever you are—
half this, double that,
too much here, insufficient there.
Know this and know peace:
The river does not apologise
for meeting the sea
with water that carries the cold of a distant hill.
It simply arrives.
It arrives and is received.
The monarch does not mourn the milkweed left behind.
It simply opens its wings
It flies and the wind makes room.
Nothing in nature wastes time
explaining its origins.
You are not an error of geography.
You are—
a sediment layered over time,
a stratum, a record—
pressed into stone.
You are a map in motion.
And there is space —
there is always space
for all the shapes of you.