~
Upon a time I believed
your voice could stop the rainstorms.
You stood at the helm of my burgeoning life,
a well coiffed Gibraltar;
the one who knew how the world worked,
which wrench would be necessary.
During my ascent through innocence
you were as much a fortress as a man.
A keeper of keys;
custodian of curfews and convictions,
warden of doorways,
nemesis of phantoms unnamed.
Enter time, stage left
the unbothered cartographer
and holy alchemist
to reshape the myth as mentor
less the honor-guard of should
more the compass of my curiosity.
You didn’t shout the way forward
instead urged that I witness
and let the path unfold.
Then came friendship,
that unspoken handshake of equals.
We laughed just as much
amidst all the waiting-room truths
Allowed to see
that you, too, were improvising.
That adulthood isn’t a finished blueprint –
it’s duct tape and second drafts
and the chaotic ferocity of love
hidden in tawdry jokes and gas station coffee.
Now it occurs to me;
no single title ever held you.
Not just the shield or the sage,
but the low, steady thrum
beneath my inherited tremble,
bloodline signatures
inked from Shakey hands
to whatever this becoming is.
You were the guide behind every version of myself.
Even when I wandered,
you were there—
in the humor I brandish
the caution I discard,
the wisdom I pretend I discovered alone.
I used to think gratitude
was the proof of something presentable—
a ribboned offering,
the polished return
for time, for labor, for love.
I see now it’s not the spoils or the artifacts,
but the astonishing awareness
through stumbles and starlight
that you were always there,
conjuring space in the world
for who we could become.
A legend imagined,
become the practical hands that fixed—
a profusion of parental devotion
wrenched with peculiar magic.
Steadfast stewardship,
bottomless bottom-feeder dirty jokes,
and all the right answers
before I even knew to ask.
The myth carries on.
~