I played a game with my father when I was young.
Tag.
I would hide under my bed
Holding my breath to keep from laughing
He would find me. He would take me into his loving arms
He would say he loved me.
Until the day, he never came home again.

Mama grabbed the keys and put me in the family bus
Across the fields of wheat and dairy farms
We stopped in front of rusty gates and tall walls

At six, I was confound as I went past the walls
Into a building, carried by mother.
Tag. In a room full of dark faces behind many glass windows
Tag. A familiar face sat behind one of the glasses
Ecstasy feeling my body as I ran to my father.

I stopped short of the glass barricade
I try to tag at the glass, trying to breakthrough
Attempting to tag my father once more.
My face drowning in tears. My mother tags at me,
Father did not say a word. He did not speak a word for many years.

Fourteen years later, I write this to you papa
There is a small boy in me still longing.
Longing for his father to play tag with him again
Longing for his father to return home.

I miss the Sundays and the weekly visits to the park
I miss your scent of fresh bread when you returned from work
For father, there are still some things I do not know
How to talk to females, how to kickball, how to be a man.

And you say to me:
Dear son. I know I have failed you.
But hear my words, because this is my last lesson for you:
Be who you are and ladies will follow,
Press hard when you shave, do not change directions
Carry yourself like a god and the world will follow you.

I will no longer be here to tag for you.
Tag hard on the walls of discrimination, until you pull them down
For your people who are wrongly convicted for fighting for their race.
Tag hard on windows of success and greatness
Tag hard for what I could not.
Tag for your mother and tag for your children

For the core of me lives in your heart
The world cages those who fight
But you still breathe with the tools to change the world
I tag on you for the last time.

Now you are it.