This is for the artists who find their paths crossed with motherhood
for the painters whose fingers smear through ketchup or snot
more than acrylics or oils
This is for the vocalists who enter the booth already hoarse
from cheering for an unsure soccer player the night before
and for the poet whose best work yet is scribbled in orange crayon
on the back of a Dora the Explorer coloring book
This is for the graphic designer making fliers for the bake sale
and for the actor who voices the adventures
of a stuffed flamingo and his bovine side kick by night light
This is for the dancer whose feet ache from thirteen rounds of the hokey pokey
and for the novelist with fifth chapter writers block
with six other incomplete stories and a feverish toddler
Remember when they showed you how to draw a line
then blur it
Remember when you learned that a broken note
was a nuance
Remember when you stopped forcing the words to rhyme
and found a pattern
When the white space changed from negative to
breathing room
Remember when you missed the rehearsal so
the moment was real
And when you spun left instead of right and created
visual contrast
There is mess in motherhood and art
There is room for both structure and play
Rules and romp
And you will learn how the muse flows in and out with the tides and seasons
You will observe the colors of your heart as sun beams in their hair
And the sounds of your soul as the gleeful shouts from atop a slide
And the words you whisper in your sleep
will fly from the lips of a preschooler with a loose tooth
And you will pick up your paints and pen
Open your software and pull back the curtain
You will do all of this with the knowledge that what you now create
Does not end at the end of your brush or the last burst of applause
But flows through veins and beats through footsteps as they run upstairs
And when she comes to you with pink in her cheeks and hair out of alignment
And asks what is art
You can answer with a warble or a blended hue
I am. This is. You are.