For a kid, welcomed, nurtured, and loved by
two parents who loved one another,
given an expectation of holy goodness and
light by eons of preacher’s family trained church-goers,
the opportunities abounded.
I’d save the world, sweet as candy. I could.
If I were good enough.

My problem wasn’t
my parents being demigods who played nice on Sundays
but meted out hell on Tuesday. They weren’t like that. No.
They loved, all swelled up to bursting, light peeping over
eastern hills, when earthworms wiggled under garden mulch.
Parlayed and vocal; virile and impassioned. They expected
to make a difference.

And so, natural as breathing, at three years of age
I told the man next to me in the restaurant,
my chubby hands folded, my little voice a confident whisper,
“You should stop smoking. I don’t want you to die.”
And his nicotine dependence ended. So he said
to Mom and Dad, who never doubted
and told me the story, before a night

of Trick-or-Treating for Unicef. Which I hated.
Because candy in the bag is all Halloween should be, yet we
were the minister’s family, so we carried cardboard rectangles
with slits cut in the top
and had to say it different: “Trick or Treat for Unicef!”
Help the children in Africa, won’t you, Mister? And please
don’t forget my Tootsie Roll. Daddy, I’m tired.
Not one more street.