I don’t love the idea that there are certain emotions that are only allotted to parents. But at the same time, I know in my own life that I have experienced feelings since having my daughter that I hadn’t had before. Today’s poem is about my desire to protect my daughter from everything she must learn about this messed up world. I have never felt more helpless than when she came to me and asked if the Holocaust was real and if she would be safe from the bad people. I reassured her and spoke in love, but I also wanted to skip ahead a few years and get her to the point when she could just tell the world to fuck off. So there. Here’s “Men in History.” You may choose to read “men” in the old-fashioned way wherein we pretend “men” means “people,” but that would be wrong. I meant men.