What marks it is not her correct usage

on a card, unprompted, of apostrophes,

nor that we can trust her now to cycle

undistracted – even by the ice cream van’s

heralded arrival – around the park,

though intermittently out of our sight

behind mighty limes and conifers,

but, sleeping over one night – her parents

working many, many miles away –

waking, coming down, preoccupied,

confessing oh so reluctantly

to ‘a bad thought’, a terrifying

what if, her parents’ death.