46. As Well as Triumphs, There Were Mistakes Too
As Well as Triumphs, There Were Mistakes Too
Like the moment Styx
accidentally created
three poisonous sea snakes
and we had to spend a morning
fishing them out of the cave pool
and releasing them into the ocean.
She must have been
particularly upset
with her siblings that day.
Or my accident where
I transformed my own hand
into amber sea glass
and it took Styx and I
all day to change it back.
For days after,
whenever I tried to use that hand,
it felt like I was moving a heavy stone.
Or when Styx, in her rage at her brothers,
created more eels
and we were stung repeatedly
by them as we tried to release
them all into the sea.
And the time I nearly destroyed a comet
by planting it into the ground,
not realizing it was new and hungry
and it would fight to be in the sky again.
It made us both fly into the sea
as it fought its way out
and raised itself into the night above.
We accepted quickly
that all of these were lessons.
Gifts took patience to learn,
to understand, and all these mistakes
were simply a way of knowing
how our newfound powers worked
and how they did not.