For Zach, now.

You arrived like a storm—
sharp edges softened by an easy grin,
a smile cut from glossy magazine pages
but warm, impossibly warm.

You build, you fix, you mend—
hands that understand the language of broken things,
a mind that maps the mechanics of the world
with effortless precision.

You speak in laughter,
the kind that cracks open a room,
unexpected and wild,
a secret you share only when the moment feels true.

Music lives in you.
Every song, every lyric,
etched somewhere behind your steady gaze.
You carry sound the way others carry silence—
effortlessly, meaningfully.

You move through forests and mountains
like they belong to you,
a skier carving paths through winter silence,
a biker chasing gravity down sunlit trails.

Nature knows your name.

And yet—there is something still,
something deep and quiet in you.

An old soul wrapped in teenage limbs,
kindness folded into every crease of your being.

The animals know it.
They trust you, lean into your touch,
feel the gentleness threaded into your fingertips.

It undoes me every time.

You are impossible.
Impossible to pin down, to categorize, to fully know.
But that’s your magic.
You are here, and you are everywhere,
and soon—soon you will leave.

I can barely breathe at the thought.

The world is waiting for you, Zach,
arms wide, roads endless, skies open.

But right now, you are here.
Lanky and sharp-witted,
a trickster, a philosopher, a secret keeper.

You are my son.
My impossible, breathtaking son.

And I am so proud,
so terrified,
so endlessly, endlessly grateful
that I get to love you.