To My Son, On Fear, Kate Bluett (December 2025)

To My Son, On Fear

The first thing is to face it: Turn around.
You’ve run so long that you can’t feel your legs;
you didn’t even know you ran. Sit down.
It says it gives a damn, but it reneges,
and every step you ran more tightly bound
you to its side. Don’t lift your hands. Don’t beg,
for that’s a power you grant it: Take it back.
Hold still and let the monstrous thing attack.

I know, my love; I know you’re terrified,
but all our fears will catch us in the end.
Each day since you were born, how I have tried
to shield you from the teeth, the claws that rend.
They’ve always caught me but I’ve never died,
and there are some things you can learn to mend—
but first you have to learn how not to run.
Sit down, and lift your face as to the sun,

and let the horror soak into your skin.
It’s not the thing you fear; it’s fear itself:
of dying, failing, falling into sin,
betraying, hurting someone. Let it whelm
and overwhelm you. Sweetheart, drink it in
so that your hidden shame consumes yourself.
Let it, my darling, rampage like a flood.
There is no harm. It’s only your own blood,

and it will thunder, and the tears will fall,
but in a moment, love, this too shall pass
and you’ll have borne it. You can stand up tall.
We all in time are cut down as the grass.
We cut each other down. We’re monsters, all.
The things we fear will shatter us like glass.
Worse comes to worst. The gift is, we’re alive,
and we survive, my darling. We survive.