2025 Myths & Fables Prize THIRD PLACE WINNER: “When My Preschoolers Ask Me Why I Don’t Have Kids” By Allison Norwood
Frontier Poetry is excited to congratulate Jennifer Chang’s pick for the THIRD PLACE winner of the 2025 Myths & Fables Prize: “When My Preschoolers Ask Me Why I Don’t Have Kids” by Allison Norwood.
Children ask questions with a kind of earnest boldness adults forget how to hold. When her preschoolers wonder why she doesn’t have kids, the speaker answers not with logic but with mythmaking—slipping into the fantastical to approach a truth that resists plain speech. In this poem, transformation becomes a language for ambivalence, for desire splintered between the life she leads and the life that lives on inside her. What emerges is an emotionally lucid poem about choice, selfhood, and the haunting tenderness of the paths we do not take.
Enjoy her poem below.
When My Preschoolers Ask Me
Why I Don’t Have Kids
sometimes,
when no one is looking,
I transform into a fish
that can split
and swim
in two directions–
one of them takes me here–
to you–
to this exact moment.
But the other always,
always
goes the opposite way–
down a winding creek,
stitched green with ferns
and bramble.
There’s a girl
in a linen dress,
with fat fingers
and muddy toes–
worming through the stunning,
clear water,
catching frogs.
Her hair is dark–
darker than mine.
But my own two eyes
are somehow socketed
in her head like moons.
And that fish
swims straight for her.
Every time.
Allison Norwood
Allison Norwood is a queer, autistic poet living in the Midwest. A lifelong lover of language, she recently began sharing her poetry after writing privately for years. When not perched at her computer, she is likely exploring the forests, beaches, and rural landscapes of West Michigan, getting to know the local plants, fungi, and wildlife. She is passionate about her work in early childhood education, and lives with her spouse, two cats, and numerous succulents.
