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.
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By David Selzer