When I was a kid,

I used to watch horror movies with my dad

I would shake with fear, with my teary eyes hid.

 

He would tell me:

“You have to distinguish

The reels from reality.”

 

Fiction from truth

Was hard to separate

As a youth.

 

“The monsters,” he said,

“Are simply props and costumes.

The people are merely actors,

 

Working on a fake set.

The film is all made up,

By writers and story-crafters.”

 

The production of fear

Will steer a whole nation,

Evasion of hollow scenes.

 

Dreams ignite profit

But nightmares make

The market explode.

 

These flicks would make me scream.

My dad would just laugh.

“Hey calm down, it’s not real!”

 

But I would feel

The anxiety in my knees,

My chest fluttered, with great unease.

 

Then, one day, I watched

A horror picture with dad.

The monsters weren’t scary, it was bad.

Yet I looked at good ole’ dad.

 

He shook.

I mistook

His fear for fear of the movie.

 

Young me

Didn’t see

The bills in his hand,

The letter on the door

Read “Evicted.”

 

Young me laughed at dad

And said, “It’s not real!”

I couldn’t see or feel

 

The trembling of dad’s hands,

The tears in his eye,

The fears in his sky.

 

I turned the movie off

Yet the horrors of the world

Still play on full blast.

The fear of reality

 

Shakes

Every

Mortal

Soul.