Sons

I have taught them all of it.

Where a neck goes soft.

How a man's legs quit before he does.

How to finish one on the ground

without making a mess of your arm.

Including the tricks I used on people who trusted me.

Sons.

I built them to go further

and I did not think ahead

to how that would actually feel.

The eldest is better than I was.

The clever one is worse than I was

and will go twice as far,

and he knows I know it.

Sons.

They listen the way I listened:

politely, and not at all,

already halfway out.

There will come a year

when they do not send for me.

The Norns have cut that thread already.

I have simply not been shown it.

Sons —

and I will mean it. That's the strange part.

I made a thing that outgrows me

and the outgrowing is the point.