“‘Everyone dies one day. Everyone. Even wolves. But not books. Not words. Words don’t die.’
–my son, 3, who is a lot smarter than I am”
“Oh fuck off Rebecca he did not say that.”
after a tweet by @Jack_McGarry99 on May 22, 2018, in reply to a tweet by @hinxminx
Oh fuck off Rebecca. He did not say
that for Kanga and Roo, the Hundred Acre Wood is real.
He did not wonder aloud if he took his first bath
“back when I was just an idea.” He did not say the sun
looks orange because of its fireness. Cloaked in
panda hood, warm and damp with bathwater,
he did not giggle, “oh right, first I had to appear!”
He did not hum silly sounds as he toddled
to his bedroom, his footprints were not like
foggy breath on the hardwood floor, Rebecca. Time
does not evaporate. For fuck’s sake. He did not stand
on a patch of sparse grass beside the sand-colored concrete
of the municipal pool, fists gathered under his chin,
and ask who was the illustrator of the molded plastic chair
of the empty lifeguard stand, and he did not ask you,
“who was the illustrator of me?” Rebecca, you can suck it. No one
likes you. Your son definitely did not point to a neighbor’s black cat
alert at its doorstep, and call its ears, “a hood.” Don’t say, “TFW,”
Rebecca, and then tell me your three year-old woke up one morning,
rubbed his own auburn cap, and asked, with puzzled eyes,
“is my haircut still there?” I’m the green-faced emoji,
vomiting, Rebecca. You’re a dumb slut. I don’t know
who needs to hear this but your son did not skip
through the pumpkin patch, harmonica at his juice-sweet lips,
pretending to be Bob “Gylan,” no one’s hearts were buoyed
by youth in autumn, Rebecca. You fucking
moron. He did not see a pear hanging low from a branch thick
with leaves, he did not wave to it as if it were a friend. He
did not try to put an apple back on a woody stem.
That’s some Giving Tree shit.