Rainbow-loom maker, dollar bill taker,
Mass producer of pastry crumbs,
Keep your arms at your side
When the dock workers salute.
Groove on past the corner where happy foot soldiers
Play cards en masse, and when the Colonel asks,
Show him your twenty-three
Pairs of tangled shoelaces.
And when the Third Reich approves of
Your genetic mutations, resign.
Tell them nevermind.
You won't sing their campfire songs.
Then move along.
Draw a line in the sand.
Draw a path to a star.
Shine so bright that the sun spits jealousy rays
And clouds ripple with rage.
Be the reason old women turn to each other on that day and ask,
"Did you see that?”
Once you've dug deep and found
Your inner strength runs deeper
Than you could ever dream,
Use it to build the strength in others.
Remember: might is nothing without right.
Consider London’s ancient, dark tower - hallways
roaming with headless ghosts who share your eye color.
Think of your father's people, too,
Ottomans who know a thing or two about slaughter —
just ask an Armenian cab driver.
What I'm saying is, son—
Be powerful, but not in a harmful way.
Because you are powerful. Yes, you are.
You are wonderful and brave.
Doesn't matter you have yet to meet
A chore you couldn't delay,
And you haven't found the one thing
That makes your heart race, the one thing
You wish could do
and nothing else forever and ever,
And if you could,
you would change the spelling of that thing
to the letters of your name and repeat it
over and over until someone (probably your sister)
threatens your life unless you stop saying it.
Nevermind sometimes it seems you're just doodling along,
Doodling in class, doodling during a song,
Doodling in the air when your eyes are asleep,
Doodling with your eyes when your hands are empty.
Those doodles are simply signs of things to come,
And signs are what help us find our way.
What I'm saying is, son —
You can do anything.
Think of your sister,
princess of song,
Of whom you adore, adored by all,
Except when, in a snap, she switches temperament,
Morphs into a Siren hellbent on sinking sailors with verse, before
slinking away to her cave to feast on their thirst.
with bones buried next to her ballet flats, she looks
up with a smile and a song and a laugh, asking,
“Which of my loved ones should I devour next?”
Don't let her devour you.
Be better than that.
You are not the cause of someone's bad day.
You are not the remedy either.
And when your sister reemerges back into
Her flower-shape,
Adored by all, Princess of Song,
Don't let her shiny nickel kindness
Make you feel like a million bucks.
Don't let it make you feel like a penny either.
What I'm saying is, son —
You come from a long line of kings,
And you are the King of your own self-worth,
And you are worth everything.
—and when I say that you come from a long line of kings,
I don't mean the Plantagenet leaves on your family tree,
But the King you call grandfather,
The one in Mississippi,
Who arranges weekly church meetings
To welcome the Rainbow Men,
Men who some men in his generation
Would never welcome,
The King who rubs his wife's feet in front of the TV
And wonders what in the world he'd do without her.
The King who places flowers on his son’s grave
And calls his daughters three times
For every one time they call back,
If for no other reason than to repeat
The same three words his girls
Have heard since the King first wept
Beside ribbons sewn in pink.
—and when I say you come from a long line of kings,
I don't mean the Hun warriors
Who pillaged and plundered,
Conquered and enslaved,
The great lords of horses and blood and war
Who craved victory above all things.
But the other King you call grandfather,
The one in Izmir, a king
Whose mere presence claims victory
Over the storms raging
In the hearts of everyone around him.
The King who needs very little
And asks for even less,
Who spends sweltering afternoons
With watercolors of sailboats and wisteria gardens.
The King who hums so prettily
Painting the miracle of water
That wild felines curl their backs
Against the shade of his balcony
And forget their thirst,
And morning is a chance to be born again.
What I'm saying is, son —
Nobility is not inherited.
It lives inside a person's character,
And I want so much for you.
I want you to be King.
So you're the second child,
So you're the youngest child,
So you lose your mother at sleep,
So you lose your father regularly to a computer screen,
So your shoes were untied when they handed out sunscreen,
So you were misfitted in other people's hand-me-down expectations from day one,
And since that day, you've tried to keep up, and it never seems enough,
So you've been given everything but the only thing you’ve ever wanted...
So you're a messy child, an unruly child, a natural disaster —
My love, you are my disaster,
And you are the most beautiful disaster I've ever known.
And every time I ask about your day, I'm really asking for your forgiveness.
Don't let life's peasant days and common ways steal your crown.
What I'm saying is, son —
You are everything.
-Erin Passons, 5-13-2015
