A Letter to Ayla of the Earth's Children By Elizabeth Phillips

A Letter to Ayla of the Earth's Children  By Elizabeth Phillips

In that dream I had, you ran to me, your five-year-old body parting crowds.  I knew your name and forgotten language before you ever said a word.  Then you leapt into my arms and spoke mine.  That night, we wove ourselves through eons and what we can make believe, face to face with each other's beginnings. 

In different ways, for different reasons, we once took another chance to live.  Mine began with a coma, a terrible dot that tore life into two unfinished clauses-- before and after the closing of eyes.  And for us both, it ended with a scream-- the kind uttered at first recognition of difference, still afraid to lose what we had no time to love.

At twelve, when I first heard your story, my blood still stung in the places where so many tried to cut me off from myself.  It was you who challenged me to start bleeding watercolors, spill tears without silence, as if, just by painting the desert in swirls of blue, I could stumble into the mist of belonging. 

Then, there were the twelve years since.  The acorn follows the oak tree, (the meaning of your name) the child mother to her, woman, the earthy light of old caves.  Was it you, or me, who brushed my voice across these shattered sands, slowly removing the brambles? So many obstacles to overturn, so many who deserted me. Was it me, or you, who learned to love the pathfinders (the wolf as their symbol)? I have adopted their language; they have become my second family.

It does not matter which of us came first.  That night when you perched on my horizon like a firefly, I whispered to you all I knew to make the world more beautiful. Perhaps it was you, or me, who dreamily pressed a face to the window as we drove home,
Glass reflecting back our smallness, a cool mirror and warm skin.

I still remember waking: how the sun poked its face through the blinds and how the dream felt, ebbing back into the marrow of my bones.  I wanted to speak soundlessly, moving my hands, my whole body, through those ancient signs you danced as a child.  I would say this to thank you.  I would say:

This woman wakes.  This woman has found her others.  She has sifted through the grains of sand, and has counted you in every one.