Michael Leviton
When I was four years old,
my mother took me for my first shot.
We waited in a line
of sobbing children,
asking their mothers,
“Will it hurt? Will it hurt?”
The mothers all said,
“No, it won’t hurt.”
I asked my mother, “Will it hurt?”
She said, “It’ll hurt a little
but it won’t last very long.”
When it came time for my shot,
I didn’t cry.
The nurse told my mother,
she’d never given a shot to a child
who wasn’t crying,
that I was the bravest child
she’d ever seen.
My mother said it wasn’t about bravery,
that the other children weren’t
crying out of fear,
but out of sorrow
at the betrayal of their mothers.
