He Tells Us His Favorite Is Freddy Krueger

and I am feeling his hands in me again.
how apt it is that he should love a man that uses your own imagination to kill you.
he smiles as I turn away,
squeamish,
hiding behind the hands that have betrayed me as often as a mother

-

he
catches me looking,
says:
You know you want to watch this.
and I am marveling at how seamlessly something once ablaze can pull itself out of one hell just to build
another,
just as an old lover can convince a mother to relinquish her children to the care of his calloused fingers

--every fire is different but the ashes are all the same

-

my mother won't let me watch the scene that explains how Freddy Krueger died.
she doesn't know that I already know
in the way that all of the children in the movie do.
she doesn't know I've met him,
that he comes to me at night when I sleep,
much as he does when she is away.

and years later, on the night I found out that he died,
​
I finally understood why he loved those movies
so

fiercely