Part 1 — Twenty-Eight Down: The Slow Consent

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You came in with twenty-eight, each of them lit.

Not one of them earned. Not one needs to fit…

To a standard, a scoring, a grade, or a name.

They are yours before language. They are all of your game.

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There is Anger and Asking and Wonder and Awe.

There is Crying out loud with a wide-open jaw.

There is Belonging and Silliness, Dancing and Play.

There is Fearfulness, shivering, a part of your day.

There is Refusing — a “no” heard all ‘round the town.

There is Sovereignty whole, a two-year-old is crowned.

There is Powerlessness, open-palmed. Curious and Wild.

And they all ran at once, the joys of your child.

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And that's why — and I mean this as all of the why…

The small ones are happier than you are and I.

They’re the happiest people alive, and it’s by miles.

Not that nothing goes wrong: there are scrapes, there are trials.

There are showers of hot tears, sometimes every day.

Not one is shut off yet. All Twenty-Eight get their say.

Go look for that happiness, to you it belongs.

It's your toddler a-spinning in place to those songs.

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Now nobody frowned once and shut down the show.

It comes in like a tide, and it comes in rather slow.

Around two, in a mirror, you met the first Me,

Just a face that is yours, just a self you can see.

And a self you can see is a self that gets scored.

That You can be judged, is a You that can get gored.

Then by three comes the burn in the cheeks and the chest:

The first shame. The first pride. Now you must pass the tests.

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Those judges must still stand nearby to be really felt.

But from three to five they can leave, for you’ve built…

Them a room in your head, they’re in there right now.

With judgments a-thriving, they train you to bow:

“Good Girl! Such a Helper! Big Boy! What a Friend!”

They’re “you” with a mask, that addiction that won’t end.

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Then from five to seven the great swap goes down:

You stop saying I'm doing. You take on the Nouns.

Now you're Smart, you're Slow, you're Nice, you're Bad.

Now you clock who runs faster though it makes you so sad.

And school lands on schedule with red pen in fist.

And the child who asked "Why?" for the joy of the ask…

Starts to ask something smaller, and shrinks to the task:

"Will this be on the test?" And if not, it gets missed.

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There's a boy who danced free when a song hit the air,

In a shop. On a curb. He never gave a care.

Then at six, he just stopped. And nobody said stop.

Not a scold. Not a sneer. Not a look from the shop.

For the judges he'd given a room to at three…

Leaned in with a frown and that frown now was he.

He shamed his own self, in a voice like his own.

And his dancing went under, like the breath off a stone.

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Then from eight on to twelve the crowd swaps out its face:

Now it's peers, not the grown-ups, who rule on your case.

By ten all those questions, the drawings, and the play,

Have gone quiet. Maturing, it’s called, or so they say.

It's your Twenty-Eight going down, one by one, in the dark,

With no funeral, no fight, and no scream, and no mark.

And your courtroom goes portable. Packs up. Comes too.

By thirteen it never adjourns. This is the new “you.”