To the ones who lost their PhD in innocence

This tale ain’t here to entertain your intellect, boy,

pickin’ at a calico’s cuticle

misses the whole cat,

and those verbose vocabularies aren’t an art like you think they oughta be;

it is in the interest of the living to wax wiser than the weak

but I’m weary

of your gatekeep–

give me your broken heart.

Your forceful mind.

Give me the foundational blood you bury

under dissertations of conclusive logical rational reasoning

give me the textbooks dulling your wit to rote resuscitations of imagination,

give your hopeless heart to my hand, and tell me in beating Morse code,

are you happier than the kid you were?

Or better yet, do you remember well enough to know?

Or better yet, when was the last time you thought of your seven-year-old self as a genius?

Or better yet, when you collected rocks on the playground and pretended they were penguin eggs in your wood chip nest,

when was the last time any of them hatched?

—

and if

you find a child down there

drumming a rhythm

like anger

like “happiness, what’s that?”

you lift her up

and hand her a dozen penguin eggs

and you tell her

no rationale

is strong enough

to keep penguin chicks from her universe