Today’s prompt is to write about gifts and a curse you were born with.

The film reel of the morning I was born
was screened and re-screened for me
in story. In sudden colours, like Oz.
My old parents: awed, tiptoeing

in an absurd blue sky, afloat
amidst swooning fuchsia petals
and colourized birdsong.
Their 1940s grayscale

gone ‘80s pink in a flash—
airy as bubblegum
breathed into liftoff.
They bundled me

and rebundled me
against the April sunshine.
Hovered around my breathing.
Wished they could just

breathe for me, to be sure
I would not be burdened.
They made a wooden shield
to keep me safe from TV radiation.

They gifted me with the conviction
that I caused the rhododendron to bloom
into red balloon bunches every April.
That I was the sunshine.

And sometimes I find myself hovering
around my breathing. Checking
and re-checking petals. Noticing
their fragile way of rising, falling, returning.