master astrophysics
for your three dimensional three-year-old,
explain the space-time continuum, the in-and-out,
back-and-forth, that minutes in a chair without you
is not abyss, not the infinite

take quantum physics
for your daughter, you can quote
Shrodinger:
your cat is still alive

include color theory
for their bedtime blues:
Without a little darkness, Goethe said,
we’d have no yellow

pick up plumbing
so you can report the toilet’s hole
will not fit a human, it is not a portal
to a dirtier (impossible) world

study anatomy & physiology
all possible catalysts for tummy pain,
bum pain, hand foot & mouth pain
hair pain, hive pain, ear nose & throat pain
wing pain tail pain red yellow pinkeye pain

and don’t forget philosophy
learn to articulate what  i don’t know means,
how to define Nothing, draw on your own deep memories
of a boy and his flying dog trying to save the universe from the great
Nothing that once woke you in the night, sweaty and stifling,
the yell in your chest struggling to be born

like a tornado:
Know what makes it, weather-mom. Distinguish
the watching and the warning widening gyre,
that when the sirens sound, something born from air
could erase you, that despite your eyes and ears,
thunder and lightning are the same, one bright arm reaching out,
waiting for something to take its hand

 

Elizabeth Cranford Garcia

 

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