an Eternal Being takes a bath

An Eternal Being Takes a Bath

“He has also set eternity in the human heart.” -Ecclesiastes 3:11

We quickly realized that the no-tear soap

was nothing but a bubbly bottle of false hopes

when you snapped the plastic mast

off of your bathtub ship.

I hastily said that it’s okay and it

is natural sometimes that things will break,

but soaking wet and miserable you asked

the newly-talking toddler question, “why?”

“Some things weren’t made

To last forever,” I said, and passed

it off as if it really were that simple.

But you were not appeased,

and backing me into a corner with another “why,”

I groped to conjure up an answer

good enough to satisfy your searching mind:

“It’s hard to make

a thing that will not break”

I explained,

   and secretly pleased

with my buzzer-beater explanation,

I pulled the drain

and watched the soapy water swirl away,

hoping that with it would go the endless questions,

yet somehow knowing that this would be a fruitless hope.

“Why?”

You forced me to do it:

“God made it that way,” I said -

but even at the age of two,

though words could not express your reservations,

I saw it in the hesitation

of your dripping face

that both of us knew

that I had lied.

You dried your eyes

and went to bed,
and all that was left for me to do
was pray that you would grow to know
how wrong I was.