Conservatives Teaching Lesson

Charles
Ada County Juvenile Detention

People who walk around with their fingers interlaced
tend to make me nervous,
like the tall woman with high cheek bones
does as she stands behind me,
insisting that I pull the stitching
out of the black and gray sweater
with the looming hook,
my tears absorbing in the wool
as it falls apart beneath my fingers.
What an example I am setting for
the younger ones who dream to be
things they can’t say out loud without
consequences, the tall woman’s
wrinkles deepening as
she smiles, because she doesn’t want things to
change.