Terrible Two

Poem on parenting

The moon was large and clouds were moving fast.

You came out all wrong. Wrong size, wrong speed, too loud, not loud enough.

Are you sure you are mine? Name one thing we have in common.

You are slow to potty train. I sit you down on the pot, but you push it around the house like it’s a shopping trolley.

You probably think, what’s the rush, you have your whole life to shit properly and wipe your own ass. You want to see how long this little privilege of being a helpless dependent will last. Is that it?

You don’t exactly look stupid. And you definitely don’t look innocent. You look just like your father, who, let’s face it, has issues.

You’re a little con artist. I can tell by the way you cry for more gelato with the urgency of needing a diaper change. Not the vanilla, not the hazelnut — it’s the chocolate you bawl the loudest about, like we just cut the umbilical chord between us for a second time.

I mean, pick your battles already, you little brat. And don’t give me that crap about being two years old. That’s part of your act. I can see it in your eyes. Your father fooled me with the same cunning.

It’s precisely because you are two that you shouldn’t be pushing your potty around like you’re shopping at Target. The thing is for sitting on and doing your business so I can have my life back, you little shit.

Your father thinks you’re cute. I beg to differ. He only thinks that because he’s a narcissist and you look just like him. He even named you after him, like it’s some kind of royal lineage. Royal, my ass.

The romance will wear off. I promise. I wonder how cute he thinks you are when it’s his turn to change your diapers at three in the morning on a work day after your untimely bawling session. Your days of entitlement are numbered.

We take you to a restaurant because we are too tired to cook and you drop first the salt, then the pepper, like Newton discovering gravity for the first time. You are never satisfied until the whole table is cleared. When we put everything back on the table you do it all over again.

It was cute the first year, but you are still doing it. Salt, pepper, knife, fork, in public, in the face of our terror, in the face of us telling you to STOP.

Were you born subversive? Did I give birth to Fellini?

When we say no, do you hear YES? I give up.

I’m not the spanking type. But I can’t let you be a little dictator all your life.

Now leave the salt alone and eat your peas, my little pet.

© Carlo Zeno 2022

________________

Thanks as always for reading, and thank you to Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她). You can toss a little support here, or check out two more poems below 🙏