To Craven

You drive on the wrong side of the road and cross the street without looking both ways and walk through life with your shoes untied. You trip over your own feet and walk into walls and burn your fingers on the flames that are too pretty not to touch. You don't talk about your feelings. You cry over dead birds and laugh at your own belly up fish. You were built to be a battleship yet live as a sailboat. you wish you could be a canoe. You paint your nails and your hair and your words but not your face. Never your face. You point at the sun and dare it to outshine your big, blazing, beautiful brain and we all laugh because we know that it never could. Sometimes you close your eyes when you sing and sometimes you close your eyes when you dream and sometimes you stare too long at your own light and burn your eyes. Questions litter your lips but your tongue fills with the answers before I can even wonder. You are always ready to learn. You can tell me who the eighth Czar of Russia was and how cheetahs can run so fast. We don’t have the same eyes, nose, hips, knees or feet. But the way your voice fills the empty space of a room and the sparkle in your eyes when you stumble upon a book you haven’t read reminds me of the way I was before I learned to lace my boots, ready to run from the cars careening towards me head on. Don’t ever learn how to tie your shoes.