I’m the youngest in my family
And when I was a girl
My father, mother, and sister
Loomed as greater creatures in my eye.
In this childish time
I was filled with much wonder;
One night I laid on a patch of soft grass
Looking up at the stars,
There were so many
They seemed to keep each other company
Out in the cold and vastness of space.
I was alone in my admiration.
But then my sister came,
“You see the stars” she said, “their plentitude,
There’s probably one for every pedophile.”
And then she chuckled.
And now that I am grown
When I look up at the stars I shiver
For I know what the word pedophile means,
And I cannot bear to lie upon the grass and look at them.
I can not bear to lie upon the grass at all,
For I would think of the grass
And what someone told me once
About suicides and blades of grass.