You tell your children not to eat
the snow half-melted in the yard,
but you want them to want to.
You want them to die lucky to
have lived, but you won’t
tell them about luck. Dark
juice pools in kitchen cans
from plastic bags, breasts
of chicken cool for salads.
The salivating animal who
sleeps on your good sheets
could slaughter your children,
and who would be accountable?

Lamb is an American writer. lamb.onl