The Fees
a tragicomic poem ranted into a completed notebook
The Fees by Lane Timothy Speidel
Please, the fees they burn me, sting me.
They hurt me more than you think.
Please, imagine as if these fees were your own.
No, imagine that these fees made a hive in the external wall of your children’s nursery.
Now imagine that the hive filled with fees has shaken loose in the deep suburban night where nothing can ever go wrong, but tonight something does because these fees, seeking warmth, comfort, protection (or seeking to cause pain and discomfort we do not know their motivations) they find their way into your baby’s nursery.
And now, please imagine their cries, “Mommy! Mommy!” the little ones cry out. Their precious faces covered in quickly rising welts. “It hurts me Mommy! It burns me Mommy!”
Imagine ma’m, these small beings experiencing irrational, faithless, and uncompromising pain for the first time, and you can’t do anything to retrieve this memory from them, that this moment, so early in their lives, is the moment where they first feel fear and panic about the world, that there are foces that they do not know or see that will hurt them and …
