day 2: dear future daughter

* tomorrow's poem might be an edit of this.

dear future daughter:

we will be poor. i can tell.

your parents will be in love

and you will be pretty like

michael jordan's jumpshot,

but we will be poor.

don't misunderstand: it won't be severe.

your hunger won't be born of poverty, but of passion,

and you won't know desperation

until the first time it begs you for a dollar

outside of the red line station.

just understand that promises

ain't the same as money

they ain't even the same as credit

so i won't ever make you too many.

someday, you will be a

broke college student at a private university,

like i am now. these are all the worst parts:

sometimes opening my wallet

feels like grinding at the inside of a papercut.

things i want to buy are always singing lullabies to me

from the wrong side of a price tag, and my vanity

is always aching. i am too poor to afford a car,

but if i had one, i would drive down to the ocean on lonely nights,

maybe malibu,

where the broken bottles kiss the beach like dandelions

and the waves rock billionaires to sleep aboard their yachts.

i would drive there and think of you --

of whether or not this poem feel like an apology --

and i would sit in the driver's seat, and i would fall asleep,

and i would dream of owning things that weren't just theoretical.