Stephen Scott Whitaker raises the uncomfortable yet important subject of one’s children’s burgeoning sexuality.
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How to Teach Children About Desire
How to teach children about desire
when with all my lovers past
the need to give and be taken
to the point of losing everything
was all I knew to do.
My heart, one deep fissure in the earth
where all my vapors fog and blind.
Love has yet to scream dark
and lovely. Love has yet destroyed them
or filled them up.
How do I tell my sons that they are small,
that they are soft, that one day the noise of desire
will swallow them up,
that one day they will awake inside the belly
of a cave in the earth, that one day they will seek
to be given to, to be given forth.
How do I teach them that I am afraid?
***
Steven Scott Whitaker has contributed to The Good Men Project before. Read “The Success of Captain Whitaker’s Dress,” “An Old Man in a Blouse, at Market,” “Cutting Firewood in the Cup.”
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