Ladies & Gentlemen, I am seventeen years old. His t-shirt is torn almost completely off his body. A woman in jeans (fashionably torn) looks up, but only once he has passed. I give my daughter a dollar, tell her she can either give it to him or keep it. At 81st Street the doors open right into the museum, we don’t have to step into the cold at all. Her first stop is always the Hall of Asian Mammals, to check in on the muntjac, on the spotted chevrotain. In the Hall of Reptiles we play the blind game. She leads me by the hand, stands me against the glass, crocodile or python, whatever might make me scream. Now open your eyes, she says. Then—no shit—a frog, whose babies, lots of them, are emerging from holes in her back. We spend our last hour watching lava set an island on fire, turning the ocean to steam. On the way home she plays a game on my phone, the one where she’s a chicken hopping across an endless highway, trying to avoid the traffic. Chicken dies, chicken comes back, chicken dies. It always ends with a truck. I’m writing this poem on the floor plan of the museum. Earlier, on the way to the train, it was snowing & everyone was just walking through it. Daddy, my daughter says, you should put some dialogue in it. These days are so short. I’m seventeen years old, someone says. She hands him the dollar.