Rhiannon Wilson - I’ve Been Thinking About How We Might Fuck Up Our Kids

I’ve been thinking this evening about kids. We’ve been together for a month and a half, or maybe a year - I lose track. Tonight I had dinner with my family and they had a raging argument, all guns blazing. I’m thinking about what it must mean to grow up in a house where everyone always snaps at each other. In two days I’ll be twenty-three and I can’t wait to get away.

We don’t snap,

but there is silence and shifting

resentment, I can’t help

but wonder what that might do

to a kid, growing up in a house

with all these unspoken arguments.

Are they worse than the spoken

ones? Would it be better if we

screamed at each other? I’m not

yet twenty-three years old and I

am nowhere near having kids

of my own, not even close to thinking

of it, really, but today I’m thinking

if I did have kids

would I want it to be with you?

Edited by Devi Sastry (@devisastry)

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RHIANNON WILLSON is a queer poet writing mostly about the people she loves. She spends her spare time playing scrabble with old ladies and trying to learn how to rollerskate. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dreams Walking, Royal Rose and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. She can be found on twitter @rhiannonwillson or through her website, rhiannonwillson.co.uk.