How to Lie to Children

How to lie to children:

“Breathe. Deep. 
Now out – out – out 
up to
the 
balloon 
moon.”

Try, little ones,
to keep it                                suspended 
there above your waiting faces,
above your upturned, opened, too-seeing eyes.
You are not saved safe.

“Look in,”
the black moon warns.

Our adult ladder lies grow.
The night-filled moon comes lower, closer.

Children’s emptying lungs cry out,
“We’ll huff and we’ll puff so it can’t fall down!”

Its blackened soil and blanked out towers limp slow across their nightmare sky.

“And we’ll puff and we’ll huff!”
but we can’t 
and it can.

How to Lie to Children

Breathe, children, breathe
to keep our lies afloat
above tree forests and water seas.

No child’s game this.