My daughter will ask me questions like

Are sparrows afraid of bees?

because she knows that I watch the patterns,

that I read the field guides and Wikipedia pages,

that sometimes I have answers.

It depends on the individual bird.

Sometimes she repeats the question more slowly

as though I simply didn’t understand the first time.

We are working on distinguishing between

species and creature, one and many.

Just because your friend is afraid

of spiders doesn’t mean we all are, right?

She just doesn’t know spiders are our friends.

Exactly. It’s a common fear, 

but it isn’t every human who’s afraid.

And then sometimes she’ll ask me questions

that scientists, in all their wisdom,

have never decided to quantify, something like

Do sharks like to play?

She is trying to find some common ground, I think.

That is where her six-year-old curiosity leads her.

This is the other category we’ve been working on:

Maybe. 

There’s a lot we don’t know. 

Anyone who pretends we know everything is wrong.

And my genderqueer brain can’t stop thinking about the taxonomies that feel too simple, the patterns we’re supposed to follow as though life models itself on encyclopedias and nature documentaries and not the other way around.

It depends on the individual.

It isn’t every human who’s afraid.

There’s a lot we don’t know. Anyone who pretends we know everything is wrong.

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Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.