The Truth About Tigers

As I walk to my daughter’s bus stop,
carefully avoiding the sidewalk cracks
as I always do,
I remember something my mother once told me.

When she was a young girl, my daughter’s age,
and my grandmother would upset her,
she would go outside
and intentionally jump on the sidewalk cracks.

Soon, when my daughter gets off the bus,
she’ll ask to go to her friend’s house,
and I’ll have to tell her no,
not until her homework is finished.

She’ll be upset with me,
just as my mom was with her mother.
But thankfully, we don’t know any rhymes
aimed at causing spinal trauma to fathers.

This poem was originally published in Kindred Characters, the debut issue of Lark and Owl Booksellers’ literary journal.