Harold & the Purple Crayon

Berkeley psychologists told Harold

his anger was justified. What parents

let their child go for a midnight walk

under no moon? I couldn’t have

been more than four, Harold told

the doctor in her crisp beige office.

Doctor, could it ever be OK

for a four-year-old to eat nine

different types of pie? Harold asked her.

Call me Lisa, the doctor replied.

Everyone knew Harold could draw.

By sophomore year, he was critiquing

grad students. By twenty, Harold knew

exactly when to quote Sontag. Standing

in front of a professor’s latest pastel

of Mojave succulents: This just makes me think

an erotics of art. Harold’s professors

would hum & nod their dragon heads

(though none of them understood, exactly,

what Harold said). By senior year, Harold

became distant, his work increasingly angry:

apple trees, their fruit rotting in monochrome

purple, under the notable lack of a moon.