Selling Our Children for Gambling Money
Parenthood is always a gamble.
That crap shoot fusion of egg and sperm,
the flesh explosion of another life into ours,
the atomic challenge of being human
with its associated fallout of trying to be
even a better person than we are.
We seem to forget ourselves
under the mushroom cloud of the nuclear family,
putting aside our wants for someone else.
Every child comes with a price:
those things we settle for,
those dreams we let go of,
and that promise there is never enough time to keep.
Then these children become people of a sort,
and grow in their parasitism hopefully toward mutualism.
We are always seeking
a better life for those we spawn,
perhaps this ticket is a winner,
perhaps just another whiner.
And maybe one day
they will even buy our story.
This morning we wake like every morning,
make our tired bed, fix our low fat breakfast,
and we sell ourselves again. We wonder at where
the time has gone. We wonder
when they grew up and how they know
to speak, to walk, to even breathe now
without our constant neglected guidance,
but we wonder most if they will ever know
how much is enough to ask for their own lives.
Then one morning
all children wake up,
make their own bed, fix their own breakfast,
go out into the world
and sell themselves.
