An Alchemy of Words

Letter to a Son I May Never Have

"Letter to a Son I May Never Have"

My son, my son,

there are those who will persecute you

for my sake.

There will be those who will have high expectations of you,

expectations that you will never live up to

and neither will I.

My son,

I will name you Robert,

not after your father

but after mine

in hopes that the world will confuse you with your father

as mine was confused with me.

Perhaps you will remember your grandfather

as I never remembered my own.

Perhaps you will spend time with him

as I never quite seemed to do

and I will live metonymously through you.

My son, my son,

when you are old enough to understand

and while I am still young enough to speak,

I pray that you ask me about my father

and that you ask me about the year I wrote this poem

and why.

My son,

I write this to tell you that I loved you

long before you were born

and that I will love you even long after I die.

My son, my son,

I write this while I am still young

so that you will understand that I was young once, too,

and that I will be young again with age.

My son,

when you are born, I will take this poem

and I will frame it and place it by your head

and if it breaks or if it burns

I will create it anew

and place it, once again, by your head

so you will remember it always being there

as I hope you will remember me.

My son, my son,

I do all of this for a million reasons

but none greater than that

I love you,

you still unborn,

you who does not exist, may never exist,

you, a moment's child

who, as I write this, is nothing more than the essence

of the imagination of God,

you who, for some reason,

crossed my mind today.