Our daughters and sons have burst
from the marionette show
leaving a tangle of strings
and gone into the unlit audience.

Kumin’s image casts children as puppets who, at some point, snap the controlling strings—parental guidance, family expectations, social scripts—and step off the brightly lit “stage” of childhood. The “tangle of strings” suggests both the remnants of dependence and the parents’ lingering sense of entanglement: habits of care and control that don’t vanish cleanly. The “unlit audience” evokes adulthood as a space that is real but not fully visible to the parent—full of unknowns, risks, and private choices. The lines balance pride in autonomy with the ache of separation, capturing the moment when a family narrative gives way to a child’s self-authored life.