There's Nothing More Painful
Than Watching Your Child Struggle to Read
by Hezekiah Allen Taylor

To Belle, may she never find her hearts and flowers man and stick with me

I always wanted to love a boy named Valentine
but that search for a hearts and flowers man
was cut off in its prime by puberty and an attraction
to John Taylor from Duran Duran (he never seemed
the hearts and flowers type)

In all things--"the universe," says Newton;
"the human soul," says Luther; "the very atom,"
declares Einstein, trumping them all--there exists
a certain type of system, a logic (even in death,
if seen from the right angle)

Pain is an internal hierarchy revealing when
the outside is:

too hot
too sharp
too strong
too smart

but we don't heed and move on
we obsess and fester and moan
and circumnavigate life's little potholes
like a satellite in orbit, never touching
the surface for fear of combustion

Francine's Version -- Hezekiah's Version -- Inspiration
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