Alanna Alfaro poem reading | August 22, 2023 | Port Macquarie News
Port Macquarie poet Alanna Alfaro reads her poem called Becoming.
Transcript
00:00 This poem is called Becoming.
00:04 Your back, strong, soft, broad, real, steals my breath.
00:12 How you became will elude me forever.
00:15 You stand in the shower, rainwater falling on soft, strong skin, waiting for the fever
00:21 to weaken.
00:22 Impatient, as always, my skin, my blood, but not.
00:29 You are spectacular in your strength, in your opposition to me.
00:34 Your beingness, your existence alone forced me into being and out of being.
00:39 I am no one without you, yet I am someone other than me because of you.
00:45 Overnight you seem to have become a woman.
00:49 Did your blanket become a chrysalis while you were sleeping?
00:53 Or did the fever burn away the girl you were yesterday?
00:57 Oh, the grief to say goodbye to her, the tears I can't unshed, mingled the tears of joy,
01:04 of astonishment at the beautiful being that you are becoming.
01:09 Goodbye my sweet babe.
01:13 The giggle, the ringlets, the toyoyoy we would say as a lock sprang back.
01:20 Goodbye the giggle, the no, the force of the two and the three and the four year old that
01:26 you were.
01:27 Please, please tomorrow I beg you to make sure that I am enough, aware enough not to
01:34 squash the no, the joy, the you out of you.
01:40 Please, let me, let you be you and keep my arms wide open, ever widening for the you
01:49 that is becoming.
01:51 Thank you.
01:52 [ Silence ]