NEW CLOTHES

Our fabric is woven so tight and fine, garments stitched up with pride— gunbelts and helmets and gold— We have the combinations, watches, buttons, colored shoes. This hat will keep you safe. This cloak will end your pain. See us in parade, wearing mirrors of our own devising.

But where is the little child? Around the next corner on the street of clowns? Down by the river where improbable ducks dive below the ice to feed? Beneath your coat, under your itchy skin? Somewhere in your throat they’ve worked so hard to close? How much it is like death to hear your fear exposed.