Jacob, I wish you were born a girl so you would grow your hair long the way we both know you want to, not in a boy way but in a braids-and-baubles way, and you could sit in my lap with my chest to your back and I could wrap up your curls with embroidery floss and knot them blue and red and violet and periwinkle and the rest of your favorite colors. Jacob, I wish you were born a girl so it wouldn’t be weird to know all your allergies in alphabetical order (bananas, bee stings, cauliflower, dandelions) so when a waiter asks you if you’re allergic to something (lavender, mangoes, methocarbamol, nectarines) I could rattle off the list while I play with my napkin (peaches, peanuts, pistachios, plums) and the waiter would laugh (soybeans and soy products but not soy sauce, strawberries) and joke that the two of us must spend a lot of time together. If only he knew I want you full of CD mixes, full of Zeppelin and Indigo Girls and sun-scratched auroras. Jacob, I wish you were born a girl so we could share a Purple Fanta with the same spitty lips and when finished we could throw the empty can on the cobblestones and listen to the tinny tenored plink!
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