By Rachel
There were child kidnappers out there,
my parents told me, lurking in mall bathrooms
just waiting for a child alone, or driving cars
and offering candy and a ride.
Now that I’m older, the kidnappers
aren’t as solid as I remember them.
They’re more the wispy gray shapes
that haunt a parent’s nightmares.
There was a one-eyed monster living
in the woods, who ate little girls that
ventured out alone. No one ever told me,
but I just knew he had to be green.
Now I know he’s orange: an overeager hunter,
or brown: a hunter’s trap, a hole in the ground,
or no color at all: rivers and streams,
and getting lost and not finding home again.
There was Uncle Charley, who was very real
and solid, and came to punish me when I was bad.
He was a long, flexible stick cut from a tree—
birch was best—and he was my least favorite uncle.
Some might say that my parents were wrong
in bringing Uncle Charley in to see me,
but I know my fear of his visits kept me from
many a misbehavior—like all my childhood monsters.