Be Kind With Me

Be kind with me, I fragile

more easily than most

of the paper dolls you've posted.

At twenty I'd have tossed the note,

thirty replied with a snide re-post.

By forty I likely would have ignored

the fractured english, but still

have mishandled the china box.

Fifty, a little more circumspect,

I like to think I would have smiled,

made light of my bullish ways.

Now sixty, my only response is a half-

assed poem scribbled for some fragile

paper doll I've no intention of ever dating.

Ken e Bujold

© 2022