On a warmer day
I snuck into a water park
on the Cape with a young lady
that I happened to know.
Her father asked me to sub
so he could prepare dinner.
He gave me the bracelet
he had used in the morning
and his daughter as a prop.
It was effortlessly smooth.
Insidious, after all, is my middle name.

The park was fun. We changed
into suits and got down
to the business of getting wet.
There was a maze in which
we rode in sea dragons.
There were a couple of little pools.
The best were probably
the slides.

None of this was big kid stuff.
The slides were maybe a story tall,
if that, and I watched the girl go down
to make sure everything went all right.
Splash.
Then I sat down on the slide
and went down to the bottom.
SPLASH!
Well, all right.

We circled the place a few times.
Somehow, on her little legs,
she got a bit ahead of me.
She jumped down the slide to the watery depths.
Splash!
Steps behind, I leapt to the start of the slide
and hit my head on cement.
“Ow?” I thought, as I kerplunked
down to the water.
THUNK.

I could see a blaze before my eyelids
when I eventually stood
from the bottom of the well
but I couldn’t see the girl.
A couple of boys – teenagers – asked if I was all right.
“Sure,” I said, “I gotta go.”
I had to find her.

“Luna!” I called, as I moved slowly,
not entirely sure what I was capable of
as my vision refocused. “Luna?”
An attendant also asked how I was doing.
“I’m fine,” I said, “I just gotta find the kid.”
It’s not like she was mine.
She wouldn’t necessarily look for me.
If I collapsed, what would she do?
Shit, I couldn’t collapse.

I limped around, looking for Luna.
Why was I limping? My legs weren’t hurt.
My head throbbed, and as I put my hand back,
I wasn’t sure if I was finding blood.

It took ten minutes that felt like fifty
to find the girl who’d been looking for me,
wondering where I’d gotten off to.
She didn’t see the fall
or know anything was out of the ordinary.
We went into a big pool after that
where she just started diving
and I let my head occasionally rest
in the cool cool water.

I thought about stopping by the First Aid Center
but then figured I’d have to report my identity
and then the fact that I hadn’t bought a ticket might come up.
It didn’t seem worth it.
As we stayed in the water
the lump on the back of my head was growing
but the throbbing was basically gone.
Luna didn’t seem too worried about it
because children are monsters
and soon enough, the park was ready to close.

We walked back to the house
where mirrors showed me
a better view of my own personal carnage
and I wondered if I would live through the night.
Remembering that my father died from a subdural hematoma
I considered going to a hospital
then shrugged if off.
It’d probably be fine.

Dinner was all right.