Author's Note: Inspired by a friend and Coldplay's "See You Soon."
Little boy.
Won't you learn to grow up?
Your eyes sparkle so softly in the summer sunlight, growing in excitement as the heat of the day surrenders to the night. You play with the fireflies, caught by surprise with their never-ending lights.
All my life, I've watched you roll in the grass and get mud on your pants. Your buck-toothed smile could shine through the rain and you would laugh, so softly, so brightly. You entranced me as I watched you in your innocence and childhood.
Little boy, say farewell to all those dreams. As you step into the cold winter mornings, you'll realize why people change. You'll stop hugging your mother and you won't be so eager to get up every morning in time. It's a cruel, dark world outside those walls that keep you so safe, so naive. You're beautiful, but years ahead will try to tell you otherwise.
Everyday, I watch you clamber up that grassy hill, shoes full of sunshine and pockets full of pebbles from your pond. You're so small. You clamber onto the dirty school bus with the smile fading from your lips as you glance at the harsh reality of what surrounds you. I watch your shoulders slump with each passing day, and your voice growing deeper and deeper, not the lovely melody it used to be.
Little boy, won't you realize that I love you?
Winds will blow you in every way possible, but promise me you'll remember to smile every now and then. Promise me that even when you quit orchestra, I'll hear your cello singing out from that bedroom so high above the town square. Don't let your curls straighten out, and leave me a snow angel in my front yard during the first snowfall this year.
I wish you would just grow up so I didn't have to watch the light in your eyes fade away, watch your innocence be stolen, watch the scars emerge on your soon-to-be broken body.
Little boy, can't you see the fear in my eyes? Can't you see you're killing me?
Little boy, oh little boy.
You'll learn to grow up.
-msof57
