My Mother Taught Me How to Steal

My mother taught me how to steal children. I was stolen from someone else.

She taught me to be a woman—the most slippery kind. A powerful, unshakable force.

I learned how to eat men, sublimate my wants and desires, and anticipate the needs of others. I got so good at anticipating the needs of others that they became impervious to my traps.

This is why traditions hold that women are supernatural—because I was able to become powerful beyond comprehension.

It became so simple to do this. To give the people what they want.

I gave sex and received riches. I gave attention and got houses back.

I was given six homes and four families merely by smiling and laying on my back. A good deal in today’s market. I never put any money down.

As I got older, though, like many women, I started to turn into my mother.

Homes and gold aren’t enough, I figured. I need children, and men to take care of them.

I collected at least ten, the children of other women. I walked away with hearts and minds, like a politician.

It was easy.

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Theme Park

Theme Park is a type of worship.

Theme Park is a type of celebrity.

Theme Park is ritual marked by money.

At Theme Park, it’s a celebration of what buying can do.

Theme Park is for family.

Theme Park is for very specific types of families—families with money.

Poor families accrue debt to attend Theme Park because that’s what good parenting is believed to be.

Money.

At Theme Park, short, young women look burdened carrying sleeping toddlers in their thin arms and wonder how much longer they’ll be able to stay in their current marriages.

At Theme Park, there is no sex, but there are children.

Marketing.

At Theme Park, the ghost of its creator still spies on his customers.

At Theme Park, all is a charade.

For Theme Park, Empire takes on a type of role-play. With bondage. And S&M.

In Theme Park, there are express lanes, and there is hierarchy.

For Theme Park, there is no outside the park, just as there is no outside the Empire.

Curious.

Curious, the rapid beating of hearts out of anticipation, excitement. Curious, the artificial scent of fudge, the swell of love. Curious, the father who keeps his precious daughter’s hand at a distance from his tired arms, a distance she has yet to understand.

I whisper to the daughter quietly, along with my consolation smile, “I want you to get out of this Theme Park and go home. I want you to outlive Theme Park, just I want you to subsist beyond Empire.”

We all sit at the apex of the Ferris wheel—me, with my mommy, and her, with her dad.

At the end of the day, when the people are locked out, Theme Park is just a jumble of steel roller coasters, motion simulators, optical illusions, and merry-go-rounds heavily decorated by protected and trademarked characters. The machinery, so tired and worn down by constant weight and wear.

And the daughters, and families, so wild with thoughts of adventure and nightmares, have so many more places to go.

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Laura Paul has been published by The Brooklyn Rail, LA Review of Books, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Pangyrus, Dream Pop Journal, Heavy Feather Review, Hush Lit, and other outlets. She lives in Seattle, where she works at Open Books poetry bookstore. Twitter: @laura_n_paul.