Plea to A Boy
Stop your legs from running so fast. They’ve carried you nowhere quick. Escape is all that you want it seems. Dreaming faraway lands, fighting invisible battles, wielding swords in your books, in your computer games, in your mind. You fight. You fight useless battles over and over and over. You wage battles in your head where you constantly lose. Who are you fighting I’ve wondered. What monsters must be slain? You’re far too old to fear ghouls and goblins under your bed. Far too old to hide underneath your sheets.
Let me see your eyes. Stand tall, stand up straight. Face the world without fear. Should you fear, do not show them. Should you fear, steel yourself. Should you fear, just say “Fuck it. Fuck you.” Look at people’s eyes when you speak. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve killed no one, hurt no one. You’ve no malice, no ill intentions, no meanness. A kind soul you are most times. Forgiving. Maybe too forgiving, most of all, of your faults.
Time is not finite. Hours, days, years gone by will never come back for you to reclaim. You must hurry, it will not wait. Feel the urgency in your mother’s creased forehead, in her sometimes panicked eyes. She is steel but she will not be young forever. And I? Well, I will not be your baby-sitter. I have my own demons to slay. Feel the urgency of now. Stop running away.
How does a woman teach a boy to be a man? I don’t know. Let me wear the pants then and speak to you the way he never spoke to us. In our father’s stead I implore you. You must wake up now. You’re no longer a boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment