Poetry by Katherine Marek

When my second child, a son, was born it really threw me. My older child was a girl. I and my two sisters were raised by my mother and her mother without much input from my father. I have six first cousins - all female, and each of my sisters as well as my daughter have two children a piece - all girls. I didn't know if I was up to the task of rearing a boy. I wrote this to let him know that I would do everything possible to help him grow into a good and decent man.

I originally wrote this as an assignment in a creative writing class. Write a sonnet in the Shakespearean form of iambic pentameter.