We cycle down the smooth neighborhood streets,
passing each manicured lawn in green blocks.
Here the sunlight threads through the trees,
touching their brightly colored helmets
until they are ablaze with light. My children
waver unsteadily on two wheels
like newborn foals, uncertain of their balance.
What do I tell them of the broken world,
in a country that has decided guns matter
more than their lives, where they won't have a choice
over their own bodies, when we are boiling
this planet and everything in it alive.
I watch them careen down the road.
The sky is vast, an open vault. An ocean.
They can’t see me anymore
but can feel the shape of my voice. My children
tremble towards the unknowable, human
and fragile, but for one glorious instant: whole.
Righting themselves, they ride off
into the distance, shouting for joy,
two determined specks
against an endless blue horizon.
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