Bedecked

Tell me it's wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings
        he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He's bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker,
        the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says the sticker earrings
        look too fake.

Tell me I should teach him it's wrong to love the glitter that a boy's only
        a boy when he loves a truck with a motor that revs,
battery slamming into a corner or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping off tracks
        into the tub.

Then tell me it's fine - really - maybe even a good thing - a boy who's
        got some girl to him,
and I'm right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the see-saw in the park.

Tell me what you need to tell me but stay far away from my son who
        still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means --
this way or that -- but for the way facets set off prisms and prisms spin up
        everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he's cast rainbows -- made every shining
        true color.

Now try to tell me - man or woman - your heart was ever once that brave.

Victoria Redel, Swoon (University of Chicago Press, 2003)