Giving Up On the Protagonist

When you have children, you see the same movies
so many times that you start looking at everything
going on in the background, on the faces
of the extra characters and in the sky over the story.
You start looking for the ones whose stories
aren’t told. You start following the one
who doesn’t have any lines, but keeps showing up.
You’ve lost interest in the hero, his sweetheart,
and the villain. You begin to question, the way
we do in our own lives, the value of this story.
You begin to look for a better one going on
in the back of the crowd of spectators–
someone back there isn’t watching, he’s talking
to a woman nearby. He’s given up too.
Our hero has made the same promises a few
too many times, bested the same enemy over
and over again. Maybe we’ve missed the real story.
Maybe someone out there has a better idea.