Because

It’s an echo of the question why, 
a boomerang of logic, the reason
for punching the little girl’s arm,
for breaking her new doll.

And bullies say it
with firecracker snap, owl-eyed
and with the whack and thump
of an eighteenth-century beheading.

Because is all the reason they need,
the way out of the pickle, the password
for the storybook door, the answer
to why the chicken crossed the road.


“Because” was originally published by Thorntree Press in Troika IV.