sunlight over me no matter what i do.

You’ll be like my father.

You’ll dress in work shirts and ties.

You’ll carry the weight of life with you,

and let that burden crush you.

You’ll cry only silently,

only alone;

and you’ll despise those who do it openly,

out of fear.

You’ll always favor reason

and you’d insist that I’m foolish

and you’d try to change me, too, into

a non-believer.

You’ll go to meetings

and take calls;

while I take long walks

and smile at the sky.

And, later, you’ll yell

at an embarrassed client

in your tidy little office;

while I scribble down some note

on a dirty, used napkin

about how Elliott Smith makes me

feel down, but bittersweet.

You’ll have children

(beautiful children)

who will grow to be something special.

You will love them with all your heart,

but they will never complete you.

And neither will I.

You think that I can save you

from an eternity of work shirts and ties.

But the only one who can save you

is yourself.

And you could be like me if you tried,

but you wouldn’t want to be.

You will have a normal life.

You will have a wife

who will bear your (beautiful) children;

she will love them with all her heart,

and those children will complete her,

like they would never complete me.

Cherish your normalcy;

it’s all you’ll have, in the end.

When you close your eyes

for that final time

and your (beautiful) children

circle around that hospital bed,

you will know you had loved.

Cherish the normalcy of that great love.

You think you want me now,

because you know you could never complete me;

because I’m difficult and rash and sometimes ugly.

And, it’s true, someone will eventually have me,

but I won’t be saving him;

and he won’t be saving me.

And the love won’t be normal,

(how could it be?)

but at least it will still be my own.

-Leah Creary