To the Girl with the Pretty Eyes

You're so very sweet,
You're affections are ill aimed,
You can do better.

To the Girl I Never Really Wanted to Erase

I still pray for you sometimes when my mind wanders to loneliness and I think of you.
I hope that your life is going well and that you are happy.

I pray that you find someone that can love you the way you wouldn't let me.
I hope you still think of me when your mind wanders to loneliness and asks what if.

I pray that though you excommunicated me, you never forget.
I hope that your hands are still soft from gentle use, uncalloused by hard realities.

I pray that I can find another that looks at me the way you did before you kissed me because I'm tired of being disappointed that the kiss has ended and I'm not just coming up for air.
I hope that you've stopped being a trigger happy Sphinx wrapped in a labyrinth of rubix cube chainmail shooting wildly at your past hoping to fend of the hurt a little longer. I tried to get close to you and you fired at me..

I pray that you chose to dismiss my affections because you knew you weren't ready to reciprocate them, because you were choosing not to hurt me more. I'm not sure how I would have taken the alternative that I just wasn't good enough.
I hope that one day we recognize each other on the street in passing and smile.

A Son's Tribute

I want my kids to come with scraped knees from playing kickball with a little too much kick and not enough fineness.

I want my kids to embrace their snaggle toothed grins with all the pride of one who secretly and discretely sticks their tongue out at others through their snaggle tooth gap with their mouths closed.

I want my kids to all have six packs by their 10th birthday party because they laughed too hard for their little bodies to handle, too often... 

and yes they will all have 10th birthday parties. You first decade on this earth is an exceptional thing to celebrate.

Side note: Everyone deserves a 10th birthday party. If one has never had a 10th birthday party, one should throw a 10th birthday party for oneself. Invite 20-30 of your closest friends to your house on a Saturday afternoon: about the size and timing of an actual 3rd grade class 10th birthday party. Bake a homemade cake, your favorite flavor, and decorate it to your liking. When said cake is brought out and everyone is singing, thank God for games like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and chicken limbo. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! Only put 10 candles on one's cake. This is one's 10th birthday party after all. Light them, blow them out, make 10 wishes.

I want my kids to smell like good sweat and fresh grass on a daily basis every summer. The kind of smell you can only acquire from spending your day fighting off the evil emperor ninja samurai mummy necromancer alien terrorist from the secret wardrobe under your parent's bed that led to the magical world of Hyrule.

I want my kids to come with favorite bedtime stories they've memorized by heart.

 I want them to gnash their terrible teeth and roar their terrible roars with Max.

I want them to have a hard time choking down the fact that the whos in whoville just accepted the Grinch into their town after all he did so that they never forget their first lesson in forgiveness.

I want my kids to sing the theme song to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air every time it comes on. The original version.

I want my kids to know that their father loves them even after they are spanked and to know the difference between discipline and abuse, because I did and I couldn't be more grateful.

I want my kids to have long talks with their mother about important things while sitting on the kitchen counter.

I hope that my children still respect me after I cease being superman and they see my tragic humanity.

I want all of these things for my Children because they are the things I experience or wished I had in retrospect.

And though I am anxious about what kind of father I will be in the distant future, I know that if I turn out to be half the man that my father is, I know my kids will think of highly of me as I do my father.

Ways to Spell God

I spell God: L.O.V.E. with a capital PASSION.


But sometimes i like to spell it L.I.F.E. with an apostrophe BEAUTIFUL


and depending on my mood, I might go with L.I.G.H.T.-O.M.N.I.P.R.E.S.E.N.T.


I spell God G.O.O.D.


On the days when I forget myself, my favorite way to spell God, and probably the most important way is: S.A.L.V.A.T.I.O.N. with an accent mark on the GRACE.


Other ways to spell God:


OMNISCIENT 


OMNIPOTENT


ALPHA-OMEGA


GENESIS'REVELATION


(I AM)


FAI(nvisible)TH; the "nvisible" is silent.

On Losing Best Friends and Salsa Dancing

To say that I'm going to miss you terribly

will be the biggest understatement that has ever left my lips.

To say that I might cry when you leave

is the purest truth I've ever told. 

I wish you weren't moving so far away.

We met in a Salsa class;

I was introduced to you by your sister

who came to me imploring me to dance with you in proxy of someone who had to ditch for some reason.

From there it's all history.

From the moment we met you enchanted me

and I have to admit.

I totally had the biggest crush on you.

I couldn't help it.

You were just too beautiful.

But your interests were in someone else

so we settled into an instantaneous close friendship. 

For reasons I still don't quite understand

we've always clicked.

Always gotten it.

Always understood. 

You trusted me without knowing why

while I was still a stranger to you.

We told everything there was to know about ourselves

as if we were trying to make up for lost time

because we'd just always been best friends

and never knew it.

We could talk about absolutely everything

and absolutely nothing forever it seemed : )

And we laaaaaaaaauuuuuuugggghhhhhhhhheeeedddddddd.

Oh, did we laugh.

We laughed until

We couldn't stand

We couldn't cry anymore

We couldn't breathe anymore!

We haven't ever really stopped laughing

and to this day

there's no one I laugh with more.

Smiles and chuckles of every kind are never scarce whenever we speak.

Once we get started, there's no stopping us.

Our simultaneous laughter only makes the laughing harder

until it's a near impossibility that we'll find composure again.

I will miss going to your house. I will miss your family.

I will miss spontaneous hang out sessions

And your Puerto Rican slang lessons.

I will miss your honesty and your endearing eyes.

I will miss your quick wit and impersonations of the people you tell stories about

Most of all I will miss being in the presence of one who is willing to share all of the best and the worst moments of their life with me.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that we met that night

That warm night at CHS in the cafeteria.

I can’t explain just how much you mean to me.

You are one in 7 billion and I hope that we’re friends for as long as we live. 

Child’s Play

Child’s Play

“Play with your dolls nicely,” mommy says.

 “Don’t tear them up or you won’t get any new ones for Christmas,” she advises.

 “Santa doesn’t like it when you break things he worked hard on. How would you like it if I went around breaking the things that you made at school?”

My mommy always says that dolls are made to be pretty, but whatever happened to the toys belonging to me?

 After Santa gives them away, they aren’t his anymore.

I can do whatever I want with them.

 Santa’s probably too fat to catch me if I ran.

Even if Santa didn’t ever give me anything else ever again, I’d just get it from daddy. I break them, he buys them.

I love to play with my dolls, I rip their clothes and draw on them with markers I like using blue and pink and purple and green and red. I draw lots of different kinds of polka dots on them. 

Sometimes they’re big; sometimes they’re really small.

I run, hit, throw, and drag them. I scream and laugh and howl and spin around and mommy says I shouldn’t but I don’t listen to her cause daddy never does.

Sometimes when mommy’s not looking, I make marks on my dolls with the candles that make the house smell good.

After you pour wax in their hair though sometimes they don’t smell nice. I don’t know why when I pour stuff that smells good on something be pretty it makes such a bad smell.

Mommy yells at me when she finds my dolls. I don’t care though because daddy doesn’t care when mommy yells at him so I don’t care either.

I have so much fun! She always tries to ruin my fun. Her and daddy play all the time.

 Daddy calls mommy “baby doll” and “doll face.” Mommy always sends me to my room when they play though. I hear mommy and daddy laughing and screaming and having fun just like I do!

 

She says the reason I can’t play with them is because I have to go to sleep. I hate going to sleep. It’s no fun.

Last night I was tired because, at school, we went to the zoo for a field trip! We saw all kinds of animals and they said that the animals were from all over the world.

Mommy says I’m weird cause I like bugs and my favorite is the praying mantis.

We saw monkeys! They jumped around and made funny faces and loud noises and we all copied them and chanted, “Monkey see monkey do!” It was almost as much fun as playing with my dolls.

When I got home, I was so tired I couldn’t play. I took my bath and combed my hair and mommy tucked me in like she always does.

Mommy and daddy started playing again and they were really loud. I was so angry because they wouldn’t stop playing; so I went outside to tell them to stop yelling so loud so I could go back to sleep! I know that playing is fun, but even I know that you don’t play at night loud when people sleep!

I swung open my door and stomped all the way down the hallway. They must be having a lot of fun. There were handprints on the walls.

It made me mad cause Mommy won’t let me paint my walls. I stopped when I saw her.

She was crying. She held out her hand and screamed, “Stop! Go back upstairs Alexia!”

Daddy looked at me slowly and snarled like one of the jackals we saw at the zoo, but Daddy was much scarier than the jackals. “Look here doll face, what a nice surprise.”

I stared at Mommy not knowing what to do. She didn’t look like she used to; she looked like one of my raggedy dolls.

It scared me. I couldn’t see one of her eyes. I didn’t want to see Daddy’s eyes.

Daddy had Mommy by her hair. She kept reaching for me.

She was crying so hard that it made me cry too. I didn’t want her to cry. I thought her and Daddy were playing. I started to go to her, but Daddy was there and he knocked me down.

She jumped and cried out with pain when I hit the ground.

 I cried harder. I cried for Mommy, I cried for me too. Daddy let go of her hair and Mommy collapsed for a little while.

Daddy took a step toward me.

He called me baby doll. Mommy didn’t like that and screamed something I didn’t understand. I covered my eyes with my fingers and shrank.

The screaming stopped. The quiet felt bad.

Daddy picked me up. He threw me over his shoulder. He called my baby doll again.

He asked me if I wanted to go play.

 I didn’t.

I kicked and screamed. He wouldn’t drop me, I only made him mad.

He dropped me at the top of the stairs. Daddy grabbed my hair and pulled really hard.

Mommy got up and Daddy let me go. I didn’t want him to hurt Mommy so I ran to the table and grabbed one of the candle glasses. Mommy had lit them before dinner. I called, “Daddy” as loud as I could and threw the candle.

It hit him in the chest. The wax splashed all over his face and he fell down the stairs. The bad silence came back again. I ran to Mommy.

Mommy gave me the biggest hug I ever got. She squeezed me til I couldn’t breathe.

Daddy didn’t get up. Lots of people came to the house. They took Daddy away. Mommy held my hand. It hurt cause the candle I picked up was really hot.

Mommy had to get bandages put on my hands. I couldn’t play with my dolls for a while.

After Mommy took my bandages off she asked me what I wanted to do with my hands.

I went in my room, I gathered my dolls, and I threw them away.