Follow the Leader

and a little Child will lead them.

- Isaiah 11:6

.

Ian and I play “follow-the-leader.”

Ian, being five years old,

plays the part of the leader.

.

We crawl all over his house:

over dusty linoleum,

underneath the kitchen table.

My allergies start to kick in,

as Ian taunts me

telling me to hurry up.

When we reach

the edge of the linoleum

Ian explains to me

the hardwood floor

is actually hot lava

and that to get over it

without being burned alive

we had to build a bridge

of the couch cushions.

.

On the other side of the sea magma

there is lost world,

where we are cave men

hunting long-neck dinosaurs.

A tyrannosaurus rex,

who had taken the form of a bunk bed,

launches a surprise attack from behind.

The great beast tears off my legs

with one mighty gulp.

As I drag myself to safety

with my elbows

Ian destroys the t-rex

with a somersault-roundhouse kick

to baseball-slide combo.

.

When his dad got back from the store

Ian spewed an endless stream of incomplete sentences

with copious amounts of gestures

in an attempt to regale his dad with the details

of our epic adventure.

.

Exhausted, I

sprawled out half-dead

on couch-cushions

in the middle of the living room floor

sneezing with bloodshot eyes

happy to have followed a leader of true vision.