If I should impact the future generation, She will call me “Miyagi,” because that way she knows she has to try, no matter how hard, before she can look to me for help and the help won’t be easy.

I’m going to paint solar systems on the reverse of her palms so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

And I’ll let her find out that life is like the crippling fields, thorn filled cotton, back bending – binding-breaking, blistered feet, bleeding hands her slave-ridden great, great, great…you get the point, grand fathers and mothers ran from on their pursuit of happiness. But few made...make it. Life would have them dragged back and whipped, only from them to run from life again.

“Knowledge, my brothers and sisters, makes a man unfit to be a slave.” Ah yes, she will have to learn. A slave to life she will not be. Ignorant to reality won’t be a possibility.

There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by Band- Aids or even poetry. “Baby, don’t keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I’ve done it a million times before.”

You just smell for smoke so you can follow the trail back to the burning house… it will probably be your own.  Torched and torn apart by the neighbors you love like yourself

When you open your hands for a hug and wind up with bruises and blisters; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when you’re standing between two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and no one has taken either, and the ground beneath you wants to cave in.  

Those days will make all the difference. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times its sent away.

And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this evil called life.

I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to stick out your tongue and taste it. I’ll let her know she comes from a long line of worriers and warriors and all she has to apologize for is what she does wrong…and not for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartbreak; when they slip war and hatred under your door, when they stare and stone you for not coloring in the lines, and offer you handouts on street corners of doubt and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your Miyagi.