Your peers and teachers tell you to sit down
Be quiet
No!
Stop looking out the window!
Sit in your seat correctly, face the board!
Stop doodling in the text book! They cost money!
Parents give acronym suggestions
The doctors in turn fill prescriptions
Numbing you to the point where
You can no longer see the dreamscapes that fill the corners of your text books
There! The edges where the text stops and crayon canvases begin
Framing the crossing of the Delaware and the great Sphinx
the wax bleeding into history
Mixing George Washington's features into a color wheel with no beginning and no end
until the teacher looking over your shoulder sees what you see
You long to grab her hand and trace her fingers over each swirl of color on that dog eared page
Ask her to close her eyes and see it! Can't you see it?!!!?
His synapses aren't misfiring
His inability to sit shouldn't be contained by a water soluble leash
Colors were meant to be combined
Lines are perpendicular crosswalks
opportunities for ideas to bridge
markers are meant to be embraced by wooden desks
they look so much better together don't you think?

But instead they hang a bolus dream-catcher above your bed
kiss your head and lay you down with good intentions and
By morning your wayward thoughts are caught by Adderall strings and burned off by the daylight

I just want to kneel down to your height look you in the eyes and tell you
I see
I see you kindle your thoughts at both ends till they meet in the middle combusting
like dry leaves
They are tender and unfold out of your mouth like morning flowers
Touching the air with hesitation but then speaking with a boldness that comes from not yet having “mistake” be a part of your vocabulary
The words come tumbling out hot and untempered
Each syllable bumping into the last
Making it impossible for adults to keep up and

It’s ok
Because you are beautiful and deserve to be heard,
You can have an imagination
They are easier to carry then responsibility
And your shoulders are so very slight
and it seems impossible they would ever fill a business suit let alone take on
disappointment
If it were up to me I wouldn’t change a thing about you
Because life forgets how to dance by its mid twenties
But your feet still know how to skip sidewalk cracks with perfect rhythm
There are no rehearsed strides between your heels and the concrete
Each step acts like a conduit to God
Because this is what you were born to be
The only expectation being the next step
Your fingers reaching ever forward
Knowing that you will never fall