guessing

Please be kind to your children

when they don’t vacate the womb

understanding gravity.

You’ve been scrapbooking 

earth’s evil, double their lifetime

or more. Consider their confusion. 

Don’t be afraid to stroke something 

with teeth, but you are naughty 

if you stroke a flame. That’s page one.

Attraction is the visual ingredient

that stings us all. That utopian romance

wore a pretty face until dismantled, didn’t it?

We’d drink poison for its colour,

mercury for its beauty. Danger was 

only conceptual, until it was contextual.

Please be kind to your children

when you try to keep them safe on a planet

that donned a meaning, and took guesses from us all.

© Mollie Mardel