Three-Year-Old with Dad

[kolemath]

Three-Year-Old with Dad

Coffee shop public, crowded murmur, wondering 
what below is.  What's under there?  Every stranger's face.
What's behind these faces, Dad?
My missing pants.

“You need pants on to go outside,” he said that day.
“I has pants on, Daddy.”
He looked at my bare legs. “Are you fibbing?” He asked in stone.
“No.”
“Do you have on pants?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Time out!”

I can’t say the shame,
only write today

a chair flew across the room, screams, "Liar!"
And screaming, and suffocating hands,
and stone hands, and hands
I can't stand covering tears and gasps,
hands over my face, suffocating masks. 
"I don't has on pants, Dad."

Coffee shop public, I look around, wonder what below is. 
They don't know what's under here.  What's under there?  I wonder.
"Your child is so cute," a woman says, as she passes 
“What a great dad, bringing his child to the coffee shop,” her friend agrees.
"Thanks for the moothie, Dad."