These children are not ours. We are simply showing them to you. Look upon them, these children of others.
Behold: A child that belongs to somebody else. We did not ask permission to show you this child. His parents made him available as a stock photograph, the license to which we obtained. Let us all gaze at him. It is our right.
Behold this girl-child, whose name we do not know. She is a real child, with a real mother and father who put a price on her likeness. We paid the price so that you might see her.
To whom does this wet child belong? Not us or you. He belongs to someone else. But we can pretend he is ours. We can pretend he is our sweet son.
This child has a duplicate. Ha! Do her parents not realize they made her twice? Fools. We are showing you both of them so that you can laugh at the folly of these careless parents who manufacture redundant children.
This is a boy who exists somewhere in the world. He is not fiction. He has a life of his own, and he is going about it as we speak, unaware we are looking at him.
Shhh, do not wake him. Just stare at him in silence, this child of others.
This child is a red one.
The mother of this boy does not know you are looking at him. She does not know that his smiling face will remain here on this page for all of time, where it will be looked upon again and again by strangers until the sun goes cold.
Whose child is this that we have rendered aflame? Why did you allow this to happen to your boy? This child is the child of others, but he is also ours, which is why we could set him on fire.
Here is the instant when someone’s child takes her first steps. It is a very special moment that happens but once in a child’s lifetime, and it was sold to us for less than $20. Look upon her in this most precious of moments, this forsaken babe of another’s womb. Look as often and for as long as you’d like.
