The Kid and the Key Before She Puts Books in Her Mouth

Bang-bang in the park pond, ducks concussed
and my daughter’s scream unfurls. Teenagers lobbing
M-80s into the water for fun. I snap a perpetrator

with my phone, and my kid picks up the house key
that drops from my pocket. Like a mini-Caesar feeding
on grapes, she tilts back her head, holds the key aloft.

Don’t you dare put that in your mouth! I command.
She swallows and I stare at the gap in her front teeth,
realize it was made for Satan to fit. The key has no copy.

Her five-year-old tongue sticks out, as if proving to orderlies
she’s taken her daily medication, but no pill, no prescription
can calm how brash these angers are—another future teen

throwing fireworks at pond life. And this is just the start.
At home, marbles with purple swirls inside move
smoothly down her throat. By the third, she whirls

around the flat. Of the five paper clips on my writing desk,
four disappear. Doctors and emergency rooms follow
but she checks out fine, looks even more pulled together

before swallowing the insides of my ballpoint.
She can now write nursery rhymes in blank verse,
livid-red scribbles waving a fairy-tale world aside
 
as she swallows Snuff-the-Bunny’s hard left eye.
Her constant companion, half blinded. She claims
she sees better in the dark. I find this unusual. Nothing

shows up on the X-rays either, not even a house key,
yet she can now unlock better stories, cherry-flavored
memories where no one’s turned upside down,

no explosions crack open the park, ducks fly overhead,
and photos show me holding the kid so tight
there’s no morning she’ll ever wake up disappointed.

Read more from Issue 22.2.