Don't bury children in suits
Let them wear their favorite clothes
Let them wear their favorite basketball jersey
The sweats from the college you can't stand
That **** sweatshirt that you can never get clean
The tire-tracked underwear
Let them wear it all
Let them wear the clothes you could never get them out of
The ones they slept in
Played in
Dreamed in
Just don't bury kids in suits
They're not going to a job interview
They aren't atoning for a lifetime of sins
They're going to the great playground in the sky
They need to be able to run around
Bury them in overalls
In the baseball hat with sweat stains
The pants with holes and grass on the their knees
The shoes with the souls that flap when they walk
Let them wear the straps that the Velcro keeps falling off of and you keep having to put it back on
Put it back on
Put them in the casket
And make them smile with your thumbs
They didn't do anything wrong
We did
We let them down
Don't punish them
Don't bury them in a suit
This is our last chance to do something right for them
Bury them with those candy necklaces they used to shoot across class at the girl they liked
Give them all their Halloween candy back
Fill the grave with hundreds of melting dilly bars
Slip them a ring pop
Please don't bury them in suits
Don't comb their hair
Leave the dirt under their finger nails
Don't fix their collar
Or shine their shoes
Let them wear their Victor Cruz jersey

And for those of us lucky enough to live in one of those small towns the whole world doesn't know how to pronounce yet
Lucky enough to not live in a dangerous city
Lucky enough to trust the locks on our front doors
To trust the bus driver
To trust our neighbors
One more cookie before bed.