My son swims in jell-o-bright water,
a nine-year-old Achilles dripping blueberry syrup
from sanctified limbs.
Fluid and free to flip his hair, sashay his tail,
he bobs along, suspended in color-soaked dreams.
Sweet honeyed daylight dapples his skin in flashes
and splashes like sequins (not chainmail) like scales
jazzed
and
pentatonic
daring swift-footed heroes to dance and sing
eat peaches or figs
whatever they like.
He’s not like most boys. I know this.
And he knows this too. And because he’s not,
monsters lurk in his idyll.
Charybdis and Scylla cast shadow and stone in his bright jell-o water,
stretch tentacle to tendon, would cleave him in two:
half oil-slicked wreckage half solar eclipse
Claim he’s the monster here –
not dazzling and daring,
but different and dangerous,
contagious, blasphemous,
wrong.
A sinister sign of the times.
I pray he sees the truth – how sinister and wrong they are;
masquerading their message of love
that’s not love.
Love is celebrating your bold, burnished child
(any child, every child)
and love is providing the armor
(why must it always be armor?)
to help your child live out his love
(any love, every love).
Not the love you would prefer he live –
a love dipped in non-Styx Teflon,
safe and colorless, sealing him in tradition because:
it’s easier (not because you believe it’s the right way);
it’s smooth (not because it’s straight);
you love him (not because love is love is love is love).
But love IS love is oh-so glorious and personal and… love.
So, you do love him
and affirm him. Tell him he is alright.
That who he is, is not wrong.
Or I do. Not you…
You wrong and hurt him.
Tell him he is too colorful. With too much sashay.
A boy’s light should glint with steel, not sparkle with glitter,
be myrmidon dark, not technicolor twinkle.
Should be sharp, uncompromising, heroic, brave.
To be otherwise is unwise.
Like some problem to solve correctly.
A choice on some standardized test.
Answer A or B.
There is no C. You were born how you were born. You have no choice.
At least on that we can agree—
I mean, would anyone choose something as hard as this?
in a world that hates heroes so flush and plush with sparkle?
then again, if we could — why would anyone not choose sweetness and light?
not want to live somewhere beyond bedeviled and bewildered?
beyond haunted or hardened?
postmodernfamilyblog 
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