Give me something else to write about,
no decent person
wants to indulge my madness
give me something wholesome to tell them instead.

Give me,
a strangers smile,
give me a fox’s baby teeth

Give me
    the tree
               in your grandmother’s back garden
                                               heavy
                                          with the plump bodies of plums
give me
      you child hands; sticky with their juice, in the tall the grass
                      give me the pit
                                          worried clean by your tongue.
Give me
    your mother,
               waltzing barefoot through the moonlight on the kitchen floor.
Give me
    your father,
              humming to himself as he plays with your baby sister in the late summer light.
Give me
           your brother’s first skinned knee
Give me
         the scar, on your left cheek; your first lesson in the territorial nature of nesting season
Give me
       the family roadtrip
                       that you took every year to visit your grandparents
                                                    until you all grew too old to have the time...
                                          or the patience
Give me
        something new to write about
something
I can look at objectively
             something
       I can call lovely
                        because I do not know how sad it makes you.