“The Day I Crossed over to the Dark Side” by Andrew Merton

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My friend Peter and I were six.
We wore cowboy hats, sheriff ’s badges,

and holsters with cap pistols in them.
We pretended we were at the top of a cliff

in the Badlands
(because they’re full of bad guys, Peter said)

waiting to ambush some train robbers.
We must be a thousand feet high, said Peter,

from here those people down there look like ants.
There were three possible responses to this:

—They sure do.
—Those are ants.

—(I said): None of my aunts looks like that.
Sensing a change in me, Peter made new friends.

-Andrew Merton,
Lost and Found
(Accents Publishing)

andrew merton from lost and found store pageAndrew Merton is a journalist, essayist, and poet. Publications in which his nonfiction has appeared includeEsquire, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe.His bookEnemies of Choice: The Right-To-Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion, was published by Beacon Press in 1980. His poetry has appeared inBellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto (U.K.), Comstock Review, Louisville Review, Vine Leaves, the American Journal of Nursing,and elsewhere. His book of poetry, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs?, with a foreword by Charles Simic (Accents Publishing, 2012) was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013–2014 by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. His website is available here.

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