Matthew

He would be six years old today.
What does six look like, when you’re a boy?
Would he catch frogs and climb trees?
Would he obsess about hockey
Or would he prefer painting?
Would he tease his sisters?
Would he fall in love with his first grade teacher?
Would he already know how to read
Or would school be a challenge for him?
Would he collect sports cards
And memorize sports trivia?
Or would he spend more time making little babies laugh?
Would he pick up his socks
Or would I find them strewn across the house like his sisters?
Would he ask “why” a hundred times a day?
Would he fear change or embrace it?
Would he race down the sidewalk on his bicycle or roller blades?
Would he make friends easily
Or would he shyly wait for others to make the first move?
Would he argue with his daddy and me
About bedtime or bath-time or cleaning up after himself?
Would he make awkward beautiful mother's day cards for me
And slip them shyly into my hand before I climbed out of bed?
Would he follow his older cousins around
And emulate their every move?
Would he challenge the status quo
Or long to be just like everyone else in his class?
Would he look just like the six-year-old blonde-haired blue-eyed Matthew
Who lives around the corner from us
Delightfully oblivious to what it means when we look at him?
Who would our little boy be
If his heart hadn’t stopped beating six years ago today?