I saw death in your eyes
My child
In pain, the heart cries
Your mother
To give birth and to give you away
Has stained our hellos and our good-byes

The fatigue is best measured in things that you don’t notice.

dust
but in this case
it's not magical
like the times we used to spend together
or that of a pixie
it's just a sign of your absence
coating the things you left behind
-- Dad

“your children not to do what I have done”

long has this phrase from that old song,
to wit, to which,
we all knew it complete,
that phrase

and this one too,

teach them well their father’s hell will slowly go by


any parent,
knows instantly their secret experiences
validating these pregnant phrases to
unification,
combination and definition

our looking face down
on the children unafraid,
and
our looking back
at the mistakes we ourselves made,
that no one could have warned us of in advance

can we warn them well,
dare we tell,
make our lore their history,
make them
too careful and too afraid
not to repeat our mistakes,
but be not fearful to
make their own?

doubtful.

I am a young woman, and pappy says all parents have eyes in the back of their heads, and it still don’t help much