01.03
okay
i admit
i held it together
just long enough
to walk out the theatre
and into the sunlight
then wept like a child
and try explaining
that to a seven year old
struggling with whether
everything on the island
really happened
which of course
it did
and i never really got the book
thirty years ago
but now
having spent at least twenty of them
wishing things were different
i do
still wishing that people
didn’t leave
or fight so much
or hurt so much
that things like sadness
and loneliness
were only words
and i got to say
that movie
about the wild things
was a wrenching experience
that even though i’ve always known
and felt that way
i thought i was healing
and later at the pool
when my daughter told me
how sometimes on her lilo
she liked to imagine
herself an explorer
floating down the amazon
and i was pretending to be
a shoal of frenzied piranhas
a hungry anaconda
an ancient croc and rapids
i knew that the little max in me
and all the monsters left behind
never went far away