Letters to Guns

There

64 There We’re bad wicked teachers. We’re going to hell. The children prepare us all day. One boy with a skinned knee says it’s like two skinned knees, and always. For the girl on a swing, it’s her mother’s attention. It hurts, ucky-icky-mean. Ask anyone in the park; it’s a swallow of earth, a cherry stone open in the belly, a tree that grows from your mouth, then back into the ground. We’ll spend the sky that way, our backs bent, our apologies stifled like yawns. ...