1996

A given cub can cover

ground and be.

One day I opened my mouth,

found that I could sing,

and that others

lived like me.

I know you.

You lay your biggest toe above the water’s surface.

If it's time,

something will come.

But it won't. You know it, and you save the thought for future fun-scares; the heart spike, a great white shark, shooting up, a galaxy of cold water, taking you. The scenario too close to you to be fiction.

You're seated atop a wall- a cobblestone bridge and behind you is daylight, springtime, and an ever-reaching lawn of clover. You try to come here every day, if not to change the sky then to sort out the unreal world below it.

And before you is the ocean. Black, wanting, simple. It wants you, but won't have its 'greatest' (children = egotists) addition for some time. Your face creases like smudged dough to grin and you smack your clammy little feet together, gleeful that dreams lack pain, and that there's an overhanging spiral of lavender weather touching your head just above.

There's no one here. Very few get to visit, and because you're so young, (four and a haff,) this is exceedingly special. More special than Mom staying home to be with you, or a freshly blank coloring book. More honoring than Christmas or video rentals. It’s equally special to the baby.

The baby.

Back with everyone else, it’s baking in a tank. It’s splotched, and orange, and held in a design with wires- and while that’s troubling, coupled with the smell of scrubs and gloves, antiseptic and adult fear, you know he’s now here on this plain, with you. You don’t tell them that you’ve been assigned- you don’t glower when they scold you for reaching forth and touching his boiled-egg of a tummy. Your smile is small because your date was kept. The baby- your brother- is your charge and you’ve been ready for such a milestone.

You look at your hands now. One holds imposed expectation, our full, and awful-sounding-name along the palm lines. Sometimes, when you clutch your Disney toys close their faults can shake and burn. Dreams can do many things but there’s work to do before you can fix that hand. You stuff it in a pocket and appraise the other because the hand on this hemisphere holds the truth- the second answer you give when strangers ask what you’re going to be when you grow up. It’s a far cry from asking what you’d like to be, and obviously a test of a toddler’s level of ambition. The truth isn’t the easiest offering but you gently lay this hand, palm splayed, in your lap regardless. You’re unwatched. Perfect.

But because you think this, the sky brings someone to you. You look and they sit flush at your side- much-much taller, and therefore somewhat disconnected. Their feet are white, their ankles have leg hair. Defined, in the older-way. They're-he’s-scarcely playing his legs, and his battered hands say he's (you won't say man, and you can't say boy) not all well.

But the arch of his face wins you; the trajectory must’ve been softer, fuller, more sound at some point. This kind of angularity belongs to people who've lived a little longer-some portal stepped over long after where you are. You feel your own vibrancy run through nimble calves and unshaped fat.

Do you wear those training bras in places like this? It’d do no good to check. It doesn’t matter here.

You can't be sure of his age. You haven't worked out 'teenager' from 'older woman' to 'that age that must be said carefully, if at all.' You can't give an age to him. And sittingsinking into a shared focal point the question leaves with every new one that comes. He's here. That makes him somehow alike to you.

But his face holds another. You ignored it at first in a wonder but now begin your invasion; there’s a girl’s full mouth, her hair, her wet brow covering his like tracing paper. They fit so well that you wonder if their features belong, or if he holds her stubbornly in place.

And these are things you can't understand.

You acquiesce to this, as is your nature, and make short work of focusing a cone of guileless charm in his direction. Men and women are a foul combination, but little girls can spirit through convention’s cracks.

Like water.

The ocean darkens just a touch.

“I fucked up,” his still white lips said. “I fucked up with her pretty bad.”

He laid the line down shakily. Some older people were like that, and some children, too. Sputtered language is a good sign that you’re okay with being imperfect. Still, his voice was a bit weaker. It reverberated, like Dad’s truck at a stop light. It tried, hard, but this one seemed to have long adopted this struggle as a feature. He made it his, like you owned your stammers.

If your ears could peel back like a dogs, they would... But there was no pressure, no dare to this one’s voice, and the statement floated on the air for you to add your piece. You look hard at him and smell the girl’s cold hair. Her smiles were warm, she was always smiling, and posing, and being. She liked to gossip. She liked costumes. She liked hugging girls as pretty and small as she.

But her cold had a taste. A sick malnutrition only some found beautiful. There was bone, and shivers, and you feel a need to look again at the color of your own free hand. Still very young and red.

His statement hung still, waiting for you to reach up and catch but silence is your favorite response. It tests.

He looks at you. His eyes are so thin but you feel that they were once so big.

“What color are your eyes?” you ask coyly.

“Blue,” he manages. “They were real blue.. You’re blue, actually. And,” he reaches behind his head to cup his nape, stopping, and curving it across his thin shoulder, “straw-colored hair. Just like you.” He bows his head and finally does swing a leg as if to be bashful. You decide that you like his pale pink hair. It scares you because Dad would hate it, but that sort of thing can’t find purchase in this place. You scoot closer. You really like this boy-man.

“What do you like to do?”

“Has anybody ever told you that you should do interviews?” he grins with a sidelong glance. “You’d be a natural.” And so you grin. Big, with a hum, like the cartoons. It makes the sky switch colors.

Suddenly he’d holding a stuffed bear. Suddenly he’s wearing shades and he looks a little healthier with their given obscurity. He looks empowered almost, at the bridge of decision. He strokes the back of the bears head with his thumb, reassuring some afterimage of memory.

And you’re holding your Peter Rabbit- the toy that you’d given to the baby. You knew it’d fit perfectly through his tanks hole, that he’d get the message somehow. It would sit there all night, holding a piece of you while he slept.

Its fur takes on a golden tint in the sun on your side- but you look and see that the boy-man’s bear stays submerged in dull, tapeworm grey.

He looks to you and gives a sealed aperture of a smile. The impressions are weak and his lips seem to give into nothing, but you’re not good at smiling either. Life is just too heavy. You both mean well, but don’t look it.

“I just got this back,’ he explains. “It was with her while she was holding on.”

When women reconvene with death does the underside of their flying skin release all thoughts of childbirth? You wondered if maybe Mom died a little, and that’s why the baby’s here. Is that how things are born?

“I put this in his tank,” you say. “Right in the hole.”

“Does he like it?”

“I think so.”

Boy-man regards his bear, holding it at arm’s length above the stirring sea. “Not all things are supposed to be liked,” he murmurs.

When a woman dies she rejoins the cold as white as moon milk. You smelled the girl’s hair a second time. Her scent was somehow stronger.

“What do you like to do?” you repeat, almost pleadingly. You could hear the water right below your soles. Was it angry?

When a man is born sometimes they shine too bright- like a sudden asphalt scrape. Older ones have to place them in tanks, you gather.

“Please?”

The truth brought cameras and printed words, speculation, an awful, unwelcome concept.

“I sang for money,” he told you, becoming rigid with an adult reservation. “I did it a long time. And I did some dumb things, and if you ever have my choice someday, I’d like you to say no.”

“Okay.”

“You promise?”

“Mhm.”

“Say no,” he repeats. “You can do whatever you want but always head up. Go up, okay?”

“Mhm.”

A man curves upward into everlasting death

A couple falls forward into one another’s breath

And there’s a baby; your precious maybe.

The water seizes the man’s ankle and he’s wearing your face.

You look at you, understanding forever in everyone who lives.

And you want to scream but you let it sink in your throat, in perfect tune to the submissive splash of your sinking stranger.