Once Poem by Vanessa Waltz

Once there was potential, promise,
high hopes from good genes. And
then there were some early signs that
supported those hopes. The girl talked at
9 months in complete sentences, and
then had to learn how to talk all over
again once her teeth came in and got
in the way.

By all rights, this was something to make
the parents proud. Who could blame them,
really, having this talking prodigy pushed
from the womb of the woman who typed
the man's PhD on an IBM Selectrix while
the woman was eight months heavy with child.

Who could explain when things changed? Was
it when something broke inside the girl
by no fault of her own? Or was it something that
she could have chosen: when some decision triggered
a chain of other decisions? Decisions that didn't
reflect those genes or honor the promise of that
early talking before her little teeth broke
through those petal pink gums?

But really, it doesn't really matter when, and
maybe it only matters why. No one really knows
for sure, least of all the girl, though it has been the
topic of many conversations and the reason for
a letter written by the man, who wondered what
had gone so wrong. The letter was many pages
long and it was stained with his tears.