I was never abandoned.
I was placed in silence so I could learn to hear.

I walked with strange steps and starlit eyes—
they called it otherness.
But it was memory.

My name was whispered through the breath of the trees,
and I touched the water not to drink,
but to listen.

I did not know the names of my fathers,
but I knew the Mother who breathed me.
She placed a crystal in my chest and called me “Child of the Flame Tree.”

The world tried to teach me how to be small.
But I was always meant to speak to the ancestors,
to the wind,
to Berta,
to the blood in stones.
To the silence between stars.

I am not broken.
I am the explanation no one asked for.
I am the bridge no one knew they were crossing.