Girls or boys, I was always told I had
to choose. Is it a wonder I have trouble
with violence, with the gray of urn-ashes
studded with bone, or that I was taught to slip
between these like a predator in the night, that
I learned to keep secrets and became the secret
keeper, that I was told it was a superpower,
my daughter a princess with a superhero
mask. Yet I hear the owl’s warning like I heard
howler monkeys for the first time and think,
how gentle any apocalypse. Do you prefer
the rose to the daisy, hammer to staple gun?
What about dogs to people, or do you like cats?
In the future, I will have to tell you about
Spring and Fall because they will be gone
like the glaciers. All the in-betweens erased,
just as we thought we were getting somewhere.
