I dreamt I had a daughter.
So pale and fragile she came
Into this world fighting.
And with her tiny fist wrapped around
My pinkie finger,
I could tell she would fight to stay in it.
Here eyes were dark and deep, and carried
Within them her lifetimes before.
I wondered who she had been.
Perhaps a warrior or queen, choosing to
Be born into the arms of me.
I wondered who she'd become.
Every day I scoured the rose bushes and tulip trees
In search of faries and their hoards of wishes.
Collecting strange and ethereal gifts for her.
Reasons, kept in a music box,
For her to keep fighting.
She grew up strong, though always fighting.
She learned to close her eyes and feel the sun
And how to dance in the storms that
Churned the sea of her very soul.
Days came when I had to open the box
And give her one of the many gifts I had collected.
I wept in my sleep for fear that the gifts may run out.
When, one day, I opened the box to find it empty,
She laid a hand on my quaking shoulders
And she wiped the tears from my cheeks.
"I will go find more for us," she said.
And she went out to find her own wishes
In a world that I feared would break the ones she carried.
One day a man came along
He soothed her pains, and held her closely.
She looked to him like she looked to the moon and stars.
But in his pockets were blades made of stone and ice.
He sought to carve at her.
To take the pieces of her that she held close.
To butcher my daughter, and leave her alone
In pieces.
But though he was a monster, he was a fool.
For he had brought knives to a gun fight.
She was armed with her worth
And with her own self confidence
Gifts that I had found among flowers and thorns
Gifts that she had learned to treasure so deeply

Among rose bushes and tulip trees, she found her ammunition 

My daughter, born into this life
A warrior and a queen