The Want Monster
I was a kid like any other.
There was a monster
under my bed, except
as I got older,
it started sleeping in
my bed, and ever since,
I’ve been trying
to tame it, teach it, telling it:
“Don’t be greedy, desperate, needy!”
“Don’t eat that, buy that, fuck that!”
But it would not listen.
So I chained it in the basement
and put it on a diet
of bread, water, and Family Circus comics
until I thought it was finally broken.
But all along it was just playing
dead and saving up its strength, because
today, when I sat thinking coolly,
calmly of you, up it rose, crushing
my ceilings and walls with its bursting
breasts and itchy hips and headed straight
for you, the one it wants more
than it’s ever wanted anything
before. But don’t worry, I
may be scared of it, but you
are what the want monster wants,
and so the want monster is scared of you.
—ALEXANDRA WILDER
(Originally published Christmas, 2004.)
