One Day Your Abusers Grow Old

and though in childhood you were told and taught
to keep a year’s supply of food at all
times — why your mother’s walk-in closet
there was half clothes/ half food in jars, a wall
of rainbow vegetables she canned and
never even served except the pickles, bread
and butter which went fast. Rest lasts, hand
canned potatoes because the prophet said.
One Mormon edict you strangely uphold,
emergency pantry, paper products
so when coronavirus hits, parents, old,
forgetful of their own religion, stuck
home, beg toilet paper from a child they beat,
an atheist can turn the other cheek.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of fifteen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House and Shut Your Eyes, Succubi (Maverick Duck Press), Crow Carriage and Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press) and The Meadow (APEP Publications). She is the founder of Pink Plastic House a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series. Follow her on Twitter: (@lolaandjolie) and her website kristingarth.com.