“I volunteered to untell the story.

I came back to erase an idea

Because some thoughts are meant to be buried

Some before they even begin.”

Rya, from the movie In the Shadow of the Moon (2019, Netflix)

 

On those humid summer evenings

Pregnant stars driven back by streetlights

The children would gather around a flickering flashlight

Crowded together in that flimsy tent

And tell fantastical tales of the great undoing.

 

It takes a child’s eye

to remember the future

where words failed

covenant devolved into curse

where monsters were necessary,

heroes and she-roes few,

bold, overmatched, outflanked…and necessary

 

Perhaps children are so wise

because they have to deal with us…

and the bitter medicine of childhood,

that power to untell the wounding

comes when we are weak and still small

 

But…because they are still small enough

that their wings can still lift their weight

the small spark inside still knows how to seek the flickering flashlight,

that crowding together in a flimsy tent is still medicine,

and so is untelling the cutting lie

before the monsters become necessary