Leading her wrist is a little fist,
and nestled in that fist is an acorn.
In that acorn is a compact creation,
an oaken embryo for growing or tossing.
Growing is so slow, so she hurls
her acorn at an old growth oak. It hits
and bounces like a daughter’s story
off a father’s distracted face and eyes.

The acorn is flung from fingers
that held the kiddie pool captive all summer
with the steady trigger of a water gun.
Her fingers go out to eat with her father
and brandish a fistful of fast food knives.
She loves chicken strips, the satisfaction
of sawing into a dead thing, shredding it,
feeling flesh in the gummy gaps
between her baby teeth. She smiles at her father,
his wallet engaged, their mouths full of meat.

What elemental love has told that fist
to grasp hard life and fling it.
What adoration trembles her palm
and sets alight itchy fingers. What a father,
what a purchaser of chicken strips
and Super Soakers, what a provider
of wooded space. He will not tell her
anything, of her he hears
nothing. So she grins and carves,
craves and hurls, a hundred small murders
anticipated in the nerves of her slight hands.