Her ugly salmon sneakers
hang by ratty shoelaces when she takes them from the vendor.
I tell her to toss them lest she get a disease
from her gross salmon sneakers.
Her garish salmon sneakers
pitter-patter gladly, mocking me and staying forever.
She says she won’t ever buy another pair since
she’s got her salmon sneakers.
Her silly salmon sneakers
stay on even through our reception, our vows, and our wedding.
Though I do finally get them off that same night,
her wondrous salmon sneakers.
Her busted salmon sneakers
trip her up before she steps in front of a speeding driver.
As I scold her, I don’t even think I’m grateful
to her old salmon sneakers.
Her galling salmon sneakers
always stay two steps ahead of me and everyone she knows.
If only they outpaced the ones she didn’t know,
her ******* salmon sneakers.
Her stupid salmon sneakers
never grace her feet again, and I know she’d have hated that.
I don’t care because that’s all I have left of her,
her ****** salmon sneakers.
Her dreary salmon sneakers
seem so lifeless without her because she was what gave them life.
And I wish with all that’s left that she was there, not
her hollow salmon sneakers.

Baby girl,

The first time I feel your tiny body in my hand, I realize my heart has been torn out of my chest. It’s been given arms and legs and a small, beautiful face, and now I have to watch it run around outside of me and guide it so I don’t lose it.

I know I will protect you because you are the Holy Grail men spend their entire lives searching for.

You are everything. No one will love you more than I do. Nothing will come between us.

You will grow up in an unkind world, a world that shouts and spews oceans of hatred. They will tell you that you’re worth less than the boys you’ll want to date.

But you will grow strong and proud, fearless of those oppressive ideals because you know better.

And when you come to me and tell me you love girls, too, with the burning passion of a million fire ants, I won’t let you see how much this worries me.

Because as hard as life was for you as a girl, my baby, it will be even more difficult when people spill oil and acid into the bay where you grew up. And all of the positivity you learned will sink under their screams of “****” and “******” and “*****”.

I will be here, though, to love you and show you that kindness is the sword in the stone that you need to rule your kingdom. You will be the mightiest queen we’ve ever seen because you know how hard life is, and you’ll teach your children and their children the respect and passion they need to make this stagnant bog flow.

But

But when you tell me that you are not my daughter at all,
that you’ll never be my baby girl,
because I taught you to find Excalibur,
and you realized you were King Arthur,
what am I supposed to do?
Am I supposed to love and support you unconditionally because you are still my child?
Everything I know says that this is wrong, every cell in my body says you are my daughter and changing your life like this is wrong and it will be so hard for you to be this boy you want to become.

How can I let you blossom into your own person when you’re not safe stepping beyond the persona I made for you?

My dear friend
My dear
I’m not sure what to make of you now -
Not a friend, to be sure;
I lost that privilege.
I understand I was so hard to love,
Or I was easy to love, but hard to hold on to
Like a wisp of smoke from a fire so bright
In a night so very dark
That it obscured
Any hint of care that still burned in me.

You were a forest fire of faith
that consumed cities in your wake,
And if I were in a satellite,
I would’ve seen you from outer space.
But I was prehistoric in my love,
Sending smoke signals showing
My adoration,
And you couldn’t see them
Against the backdrop of smog
That polluted my affection.

You were blind
and spoke through sound,
While I was mute
and spoke through sight,
And you were telling me that you heard
My pleas for help,
You were telling me that you cared.
But there was a language barrier,
My painting to your symphony,
So I couldn’t tell you how much
I appreciated everything
You had done for me.

And as the river of time bore down upon me
I may have lost all the negative in the current,
Or remembered the positive
With more grace than it deserved.
Maybe I have painted myself
as the poor and misunderstood antihero,
who returned to right their wrongs,
to write their wrongs,
when in reality, I was the villain,
who sees themself in a righteous halo
of furor, passion, and glory,
and I caused too much pain to ever
make up for any of the harm I bred.
I don’t know.

But I know that you deserve better
Than my continued silence.
So I’ll give with this apology
The embers of my passion
That burn evermore
With the knowledge that you are
Everything I could want in a friend.
You always were.
So thank you,
My dear
My dear friend.

If I should have a daughter, the first thing I’m gonna teach her is how to pass the blade. Because then she’ll know that if she handles it the right way, she won’t hurt herself or the people she cares about.

She’ll learn that screaming at the world won’t help her tear it down,
that the world will only tear her down instead.

And that’s how she’ll learn to stand strong - because once you’ve built your stronghold back up, you stand so tall and so proud that eventually you believe it too.

I’ll be there to help her see that when her wrists ache, and her shoulders shake, and her legs tremble, there will be hands reaching out to help her hold up the world.
She’ll have help donning her armor, unsheathing her sword, and fighting her battles.
She’ll have help forming her fortress and fortifying herself because
she
is not
alone.

When she realizes she can’t save all the hurting little girls out there, I’ll show her that she’s one of them too,
and so was I,
and that saving herself brings her one step closer to handing a little girl the grip of a blade and teaching her to wield it.

There will be times where she can’t think to go to work, do her homework, or even get out of bed.
She won’t find the motivation to help herself, let alone anyone else.
There will be days when she screams at her mother that having her was a mistake,
days when she can’t move for all the speed of the world around her because she doesn’t feel a part of it,
and days when she would rather give up than suffer any longer.

She won’t think to pass the blade, too busy turning it on herself, because the sight of her blood is better than the sight of her tears.

But those instances when she ends up at the bottom of that pit that’s been dug special for her are the ones she’ll forget in pieces,
pulling out those jenga blocks and stacking them anew so she can build her tower even higher.
She’ll see through the windows in her castle a world so worth living,
worth changing,
that she’ll use her blade only to protect those who can’t yet see the ocean or the mountains because their palace hasn’t made it out of their pit.
Their precarious towers won’t fall because she’ll be busy protecting them all.

And when the world tries to tear you down, she’ll say
“No,”
because she’s seen how terrifying the world can be,
but she has her army of protectors and her blade, and now she’ll pass you your own and show you how to fight.

My dear friend, to whom I can only wish life,
I take this moment to write these last words—
words I could only think to send to you.
You, whom I have lost forever,
and who, for all your sense, could not find
the right path,
the righteous path.
(You did not follow my path).

No—
I am not one who can determine
right and wrong;
for every drop of insight in your glass
is one emptied from my own.
But I can say I do not understand
what brought you to this field,
what stole you
from my grasp,
what led you
to the wolves.

As I sit here in my bed of sorrows
and relive my life’s distress and delight,
and the wind rustles
through the leaves of the trees—
and my peers surround me,
whispering the end of days—
I ponder the failings
I never took the chance to weigh.

And you have not left my mind
for a moment
in our decaying world.
(You could not leave my mind,
for where would you go?)

Oh, my friend,
there is not a moment
I do not wish for something to
bring you back to me
so to return you to my side,
to a place where you
are safe.  

But who am I to control your fate?
I am not your keeper—
if only.
You chose your fate and I chose mine,
and those decisions saw us to our place,
here on life’s arena.

It is all I can do to hope and pray
for one as
bright as you shine
to hold on to your place in this world.
I beg you to see this through to the end,
and mourn me,
For I would lay down my own life,
Be it that you could live.

Contemplation causes my chest to quake.
There is not a word that can help me now.
The terror of the night keeps me awake.

As I sit here, and I ponder my wake,
my ruminations have me wipe my brow.
Introspection causes my chest to quake.

I can’t seem to think, for anyone’s sake,
of a way to end this, to disavow
terror in the night that keeps me awake.

It hits now and causes in me a break;
the who and the what, the where and the how.
Awakening causes my chest to quake.

It is my problem, it is my mistake
that brought me here and has made me allow
the terror to come and keep me awake.

I dream of it now, the steps that I make,
and I decide it’s time to take my bow.
Understanding causes my chest to quake.
I won’t let the terror keep me awake.

Contemplation, rumination, damnation:
all things that happen more in this cell than elsewhere.
This cell.
I won’t be here much longer,
and there’s not a word you can say that can help me now.
The terror of the night keeps me awake.

Agitation, anticipation, rationalization:
thoughts whirl around in my head and
you don’t understand—I can’t
control them.
I wipe my brow.
The introspection causes my chest to quake.

Explanation, elucidation, machination:
that this must not be my fault.
I’m innocent!
But—how can I show them, show you
what made me,
the terror that caused in me a break?

Justification, accusation, realization:
It was the world that did this—it was
my mother, my father, my brother
my teacher, my preacher,
my—you. You fade into me
and it’s this understanding that begins my shake.

Consternation, hesitation, cessation:
I have no one left to blame,
I’ve been abandoned by even
my folly, our folly.
Really now,
I should have known how long this would take.

Capitulation, resignation, preparation:
With a sound besides my brain—klink go the keys—
the understanding bubbles up
as bile hits my throat and
it’s time, “it’s time” ring at once
Even the terror can’t keep me awake.