I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours.

Her name was Kim and her skin was bad

Like mine, eczema, though worse, somehow

On a girl, as if that rhyme about what

Little girls and boys are made of had failed her:

She was not sugar and spice and all things nice.

We, as a collective of 8 year olds,

Had cast her out as defective, and yet,

I had feelings for her.

I knew what it was like to have that itch.

To draw blood with my fingernails,

To wear those dry patches, lizard skin, scales,

To daub myself with steroid creams

That would sting so much they made me scream

But my complaint was mostly hidden

Hers was on her face

For one so marked

School can be an ugly place

There was one recess when we were playing chasey

And she had cornered me in the boys' toilets

I had always thought she liked me

So amid the shit stained, piss-stinking walls

I uttered those words:

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

She nodded, feverish from the chase

Panting with expectation

So I undid my pants and pulled it out

She immediately screamed and ran

And told everybody in the quadrangle

That I had shown her my thingy

I scrambled out after her, shouting

"No I didn't, no I didn't!"

And because I was the one not visibly disfigured

Because I was a boy, because my family were nice,

Because my lunchbox was always interesting,

Because I was smart, because I wasn't poor,

They all believed me over her.

© Shaun Patrick Green 2018

Hope.

Do I hold you gently

And pretend we can be friendly?

After what we have seen

Neither of us gets off lightly.

Your coughing,

My snoring

Your constant texting

My constant cursing

Your genius for mess

My almost OCD need

For order and cleanliness

Your love of reality TV

My disdain for oxymorons

Your pride in Hungarian heritage

My indifference to where I come from

Your love of your vocation

My need for music and art

Your skill with needle and thread

Transcending what you call "craft"

Politics makes you yawn

I need to know each minister's name

You roll your eyes at election time

I enjoy the tactics of the game

I never wanted children

You wanted someone to teach

So we fought your cancer

To obtain a daughter

Who is beyond both our reach

You take the mornings

Feuding over being fed

I take the evenings

Bath time, teeth cleaning and bed

You try to teach her concepts

I make her laugh with rhymes

Imagination is about

Making up stupid stuff

Not learning Gray's Anatomy

She's 4 years old

Let her discover

Her own knowledge trajectory

But you disrupt the feedback loop

Of our personal dialectic

Forcing me to focus on what matters

Placating my internal skeptic

I could laugh and spoil her all day

But your head remains cool

You don't want an entitled brat

And remind me that she is in preschool

That children are here to learn

To hopefully make the world a better place

Than the festering toilet we have left them

Our legacy, our disgrace,

And like generations before us

She shall grow to fill our lack,

Plug the gaps in our understanding,

We hope, and bring our planet back.

© Shaun Patrick Green 2018