For My Son

My kid has shaped me.

He has placed a garden of flowers in my brain, and built a birdhouse in the small of my back. He has drawn piano keys on the inside of my eyelids and has squeezed into the bottom of my fingertips an infinite supply of mint chocolate chip ice cream. He has installed a perfectly buzzing beehive in my right ear, and planted a cherry tree on top of my head.

My boy, my beautiful boy, what you have given me is greater than the full value of even the most glorious of imagined lives.

And I have known this since that fall evening, the nurse put you in my arms and I felt the thrill of the cherry sprout, reaching upwards towards the last remaining splendor of sunlight.