At the movies last night
I was ravaging a box
of Swedish Fish
and trying to stretch my leg
into the aisle
so my knee wouldn’t stiffen
into a softball-size Jujyfruit,
when some students
from the school I work at
entered and took a seat
a few rows down from me.
I pulled my hat over my eyes
and tore
into a box of Reese’s Pieces,
just as the previews blinked on,
and sure enough,
the kids started mocking them,
by popping back at the screen
the end words
of every cringe-laden quip
dripping with the rhythmic,
over-reasoned butter
of their hypocritical parents,
because their teen-centric
misperception that only they
are worth watching hadn’t
been kicked out by them yet.
I waited to see
if anyone in the theatre
would reprimand them,
and nobody did, of course,
including me.
Best friends now,
do they know that in 15 years
each will be ignoring
the other’s passions,
unfollowing each other’s
achievements, and withholding
support from one another,
because each will be so
self-centered they’ll think
only their life and art is worth
basic acknowledgment?
I made it through the movie,
which is to say I made it through
two hours of noise and lack of
respect for any art object
with nuance and depth,
a self-esteem tragedy that,
for them, makes perfect sense,
since they obviously didn’t think
very much of themselves,
they had to project their shadows
on a screen and dance
in what was supposed to be
a dark and silent space
in order to feel their smiles shatter
into something like laughter yoga,
and why,
on the walk home from the theatre
I purposefully walked behind
an anonymous family
for about 100 yards, they were
going in my direction anyway,
to remind myself of
the awesome power of the objective
correlative to help one discover
unrealized parts of self, and how
while practicing being unfollowed
in public, I was actually extending
this literary device to help me
embody the basic yet profound
experience of being seen.