why there was a rusting 42 gallon barrel in the backyard or
why i hid in the green onions behind it from the teenagers and
how to feel about getting pushed down stairs when adults weren't looking, nor
how to think of fresh or ancient rejections while driving home from work, nearly 40.
that little boy behind the oil drum who must be enough, whether or not:
whether he is with a wife or without; with a good life or without; with potential lovers or without.
why this weeping woman would confess to a small boy hiding behind an oil drum
that his friend, who she has loved for 20 years, is a near-martyred saint with a perfect cock,
if the little boy, sucking the end of a green oninon, can only turn himself into absolute nothingness in order to provide--
what could even be provided, he wondered, but it seemed like comfort, costing him something equally indistinct.
why his caring mother should care so deeply about preserving his infidelous marriage
that her voice should break like the skin of his emotions leaving bright new scars across the top of old,
which he should worry about, metasticizing tissues at his age or death,
how you might describe it.
why lovers stop talking to him sometimes slowly or all at once, leaving him then
if he can pull back, ascending in macroscope to clouds, then galaxies, then abandoning
the limits of his body and his heart (my heart), the plausible weakness of existence, even the question of whether i care
whether i am alive enough to recognize my own enoughness, elevated so far i am perhaps puncturing the basement of reality
where i am enough, as is, with nothing else
if the little boy was also enough
05/01/24
