If you tell me you were just following orders 

I know you understood why I asked, you know 

Someone, perhaps even a baby, was being hurt; 

A baby will not have the words to tell someone. 

She will cry and then stop crying, she may grow to be a woman 

With dark eyes, whose real mercy is that she will not accept your explanation. 

About the Poet: Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, The Sow’s Ear, and [PANK] as well as multiple other journals. She was a semi-finalist in the 2016 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry and the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.