Make Hate Bad Again

When my daughter was little
she went through a stage
where she said, “I hate,”
about almost everything.
No matter how many times
I told her hate was a bad word,
that it was okay not to like something,
but not to hate,
she kept saying it.
One day, at the end of my rope,
I told her if she said “hate” 
one more time,
I would wash her mouth out with soap.
She thought it was an idle threat.
It wasn't.
She said it 
and I scooped her up,
heading for the kitchen sink.
She clamped her lips shut
as I held the bottle of Dawn near her mouth,
asking one last time,
“Are you going to say hate anymore?”
She kept her lips closed,
but shook her head no.
It was enough.
I'd stopped moving the tolerance line,
and she decided a mouthful of dish soap
wasn't worth crossing it.
That's all it took. 

We live in a world
where hate is everywhere.
I don't understand it.
It takes a lot of effort 
to hate that much,
though some people make it easy.
Still, I wish we could all
draw that immovable line in the sand,
declaring an end to hate,
with consequences so severe
no one would dare to cross it.

~Elise Skidmore ©2025

Thank you for coming along on my journey through Poetry Month!