What She Wants Me to Say

she shows me a story she read in the newspaper:

some guy smashed his children’s skulls with
a hammer one morning because
he got tired of waiting for them to
get ready for school.

i read it myself:

it turns out this guy & his wife were, you know, fortyish
& from her needled doctored entrails
& from his whackoff in a plastic cup
just when they thought they couldn’t wait anymore
came these twins, a boy and a girl--
one of each--
so they wouldn’t have had to do it again.

my friend’s waiting for me to finish reading

she’ll want me to say something then, like maybe:

“you know, this particular parent’s behavior is really
in its way perfectly
logical, as in...consistent
with what he probably
thinks children are for if he...”
no. that’s not it.
“these people were getting their wrong parts doctored,
obviously,
but you’re not--
you are of course nothing like them”
yes. i think that’s it.