The Truth Is When I Went To

I Kept The Fingers Of My Left Hand Crossed All The Time, While On My Right-hand Fingers I Counted Anything At All—steps To The Refrigerator, Seconds On The Clock, Words In A Sentence—to Keep My Head Occupied. The Counting Felt Like Something To Hang On To, As If Finding The Right Numbers Might Somehow Crack The Code On Whatever System Ran The Slippery Universe We Were Moving Through.

A Pool Game Mixes Ritual With Geometry.

It Turned Out To Be Impossible For Me To 'run Away' In The Sense Other American Teenagers Did. Any Movement At All Was Taken For Progress In My Family.

Mother’s Particular Devils Had Remained Mysterious To Me For Decades. So Had Her Past. Few Born Liars Ever Intentionally Embark In Truth’s Direction, Even Those Who Believe That Such A Journey Might Axiomatically Set Them Free.

Ten Years, She's Dead, And I Still Find Myself Some Mornings Reaching For The Phone To Call Her. She Could No More Be Gone Than Gravity Or The Moon.