inspired by an episode of This American Life. This is a poem based on words from Piers Anthony. Whom I loved as teen.
One thing that you who had happy childhoods
Should understand about those of us who didn’t:
We’re not that way out of perversity.
We learned to cope in ways you never had to.
And when you sneer at stories we escape in,
And mock the maps of our enchanted kingdoms.
Call them gaudy, frivolous, cliché…
We know you never found this world too real,
Mundania too painful not to run from.
You never needed dreams you could not dream.
Don’t pity us: we know how much you miss.
Tom Juniper Poetry 