He Never Sat Still

For Ben....

He Never Sat Still

by Kelly Colon

for Ben…..

He never sat still.
Not for stories,
not for circle time,
not even for sleep.

While other kids sat cross-legged and quiet,
he was a blur 
a flash of movement,
a question in motion,
a storm I didn’t yet know how to name.The calls came early.
Daycare — he’s biting again.
Preschool — he’s too aggressive.
Elementary — he’s too different.

By middle school,
they’d stopped calling me surprised.
Every “incident” read like déjà vu,
as if his energy was a crime
that kept escalating with age.

I remember the meetings 
those polished tables,
those words like “impulse control” and “noncompliance.”
I remember the look in his eyes 
that same wild spark
trying to understand why he was always
the problem to be fixed.

And then high school.
The stakes higher,
the judgment sharper,
but something shifted.

Wild movements turned lyrical on a wrestling mat.
His brain and body
finally found their rhythm 
a fragile calibration
I prayed the world wouldn’t break again.

Now, no longer a boy.
A man has taken his place.
Toy trucks replaced by real ones,
giggles traded for a laugh
that still fills the room the same way.

Sometimes, I still see him 
the boy who’d lie under the shopping cart
and tell me he was flying.

And I smile.
Because I remember what it took
for both of us to get here 
to turn motion into meaning,
to turn chaos into grace,
to keep moving,
even when the world
kept telling us to sit still.