~
unkept
in first grade at hippie school
my child learned math from stories of gnomes
Matthew Minus always losing his gems
David Divide who liked to share
in each student’s desk a little trove
of flat glass beads to count
a system flawed by inflation
after trips to the craft store with parents
jeweled rainbows spilled from every surface
such a danger of wealth underfoot
in one story a rainbow is a promise
that we’ll be punished differently next time
and really a promise is just
a lie waiting to happen
people only keep their promises
until they don’t want to anymore
and isn’t that best for everyone
don’t get me wrong I want
to hoard every maybe gem
like a myopic dragon
who mistakes having a thing for keeping it
the way we mistake love as always lasting
a fairy tale to make sense of our intractable desire
to bask in the fleeting glow of all our riches
but not even the sun shines unbroken forever
when my child learned that the sun would die
we had to stop watching the science show
so they could mourn for a solar corpse
ten billion years in advance
since they won’t be there when it happens
though even in our presence
the cosmos confounds the senses
like when they were four and cried
looking out my bedroom window
because they couldn’t see the earth spinning
but it must be because I’d said so
no power is more terrible
than the weight of our words
to our children they eclipse reality
hold them down like gravity
some delicately calibrated crushing force
whose balance we’re always tipping
best not to say a thing
unless you mean it
though even then
there will always be
time enough
to let it go
~
Stephanie Sesic
Stephanie Sesic teaches writing at Cuyahoga Community College and is happiest when hiking in the Cuyahoga Valley. Her work is forthcoming at Sunlight Press and has appeared recently in Claw & Blossom and Rascal. Her chapbook, The Intimate Verge, was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008.