maybe the second time around is better. but everyone tends to forget the important parts. equally, they forget the most simple. i don't recall asking for this. actually. i don't remember asking for anything at all. it was just given to me. hand fed. for whatever reason. we didn't think to use spoons at the time. which i am very grateful for. had we thought of it then, i don't think i would be as delighted by that presence of being as i am now.

during that time i would drive ten miles to a specific cemetery surrounded by nothing but agriculture, trees and a questionable creek that came and went as it pleased. the creek fed a moderately sized chocolate lake. at least it looked like chocolate to me. and several times while living there, i contemplated drinking that water. but it was mostly stagnant, and i couldn't look past that aspect of it. one should never drink from anything that is stagnating. instead i would sit under a strong tree and read william carlos williams, while drinking a forty. i would get drunk and cry over words and thoughts that weren't mine, along with the ones that were. why did william carlos williams have to be dead now. and why weren't the words he'd left me enough to satisfy. i wondered if i too would leave words to someone who would live much later than myself. and i would dread the eventual time that would come in a few hours. when i had to enter the world again. eventually, i would fall asleep. sleep was solid state around that time, but still no solution. and i would wake to the same day, that bore the same quandaries. my mouth dry and sticky.

when i was a child i lived out in the country. about five miles north of town. close enough that at night i could see the dome of light encasing the city. and the myriad of lights, varying in size, shape and colour, that were tossed on the horizon line. seemingly as casually placed as the location of the city itself. i would stare at the town and imagine all the tiny people milling about inside its supposed borders. there had to be thousands of little souls in that tiny place. just living lives. and i wondered what they were thinking. and what they were doing. kind of like when you are lying in the grass, and happen to notice a plane gliding dreamily overhead. for as long as i can remember, i have watched these planes fly by and imagined all the tiny people inside that tiny cylinder. but they aren't tiny at all, just distant. headed somewhere for some reason. and when i'm alone, and it is quiet outside except for the faint sound of jet engines, and this fragile looking ship trailing white smoke is passing me by, i find myself weeping. the notion of it, the sight of it, stirs up some vast and incomprehensible perspective of life. i am a slight speck of time. so tiny. and very very small. i can't help but cry happy tears. over the beautifully and infinitely temporary instances i don't understand.

but because i lived so far from town, and had no neighbors within my age, i formed a deep trust in my imagination, as most children placed in a similar circumstance are forced to do. i played with my brothers. but when i wanted to be alone, i would ride my bike to the cemetery. it was one of the oldest in ohio, i may have just made that up, but it was really old. it was across the cornfield from our house. and after the harvest, one could see portions of it in the distance. i rode my bicycle down the rocky road, where i always assumed older kids would go to have sex and do drugs. i did both of these things in that place later in life. maybe namely because of this childhood assumption. but there were two parts to the cemetery. a hill and a "forest." at least i liked to think it was a forest. and along the southern edge was a slummy trailer park. i was partial to the hill. it was the older portion. and i would sit. and speak with the dead people who lived there. we would watch the sun go down. and despite how dreary the day had been, the sunsets were always wonderful. the sort of beauty one mourns over. as it passes. in fact, the gloomiest days brought about the most luminous sunsets. so the dead and i would sit. and talk. because i felt, they were just as lonely as i was. we would watch the sun go down. and from time to time, the trailer park kids would come around and knock down the tombstones. my mother and i would do our best to restore the damage done. it always made me so sad. that they would do this to my friends. but they didn't know. that we were friends.