1.
Ghosts of the past are sure to haunt me. Watching Hardwicke’s Thirteen. Who wants to ever have a girl, or children even in general.
2.
Working nights back end of the week. The days disappear, lose their names. Then longer empty days the front end. Without purpose, without direction. I used to make something of all this, I used to make things that were built and crouched up on twos, steadily rose up on four, sniffed about me, wandered off through the door, prowled away into the world.
3.
Danger from all sides of the streets, insulated ever more, where would I have ever gone without you? When did I stop going anywhere? How come I can’t stop going? Stop, stop, go further. There are times when I stop dreaming and I no longer hope when I’m awake. There are times when I dream and it’s cut short by the day. Then I twist to stretch a leg and my back goes beyond repair. I’m hurting myself to paralysis now. I barely walk like an old man. I barely walk at all. Out of dreaming and in with the pain.
4.
And here we were thinking we had come to an impasse, that all the forks in the road where folded into one another and the horizon was clear. Chasing the sun, kicking dust, long summer falls.
5.
I fell when I was nine and put a gash in my left cheek. Younger I ran down a driveway and slipped and skidded along my hand. Between then and the thing with the cheek, I was tossing souvlakia sticks and stood too close to the concession stand, there was aluminum siding, or plates of aluminum on the side, silver and slightly bent. I nearly took off my finger. At 18, just when things were beginning to settle down, we were by the library and mistaken for someone else. I got hit with a pipe along the ribs and stabbed right over my heart. I was stabbed first and then hit with the pipe. I had a coke at the pizzeria and lit a cigarette. It took a paramedic and a cop peering into the hanging bit of meat to convince me to go to the hospital.
6.
As each day passes, another possibility folds away and the crease disappears. Another ghost suddenly appears, vivid, and rushes to fade. A spark in the daylight, shimmer along the pavement in the sun. I could have been a lawyer. I could have been a poet. I could have been an FBI agent. I could have been a criminologist. I could have been a painter. I could have been a musician. I could have dreamed harder. I could have lived.
7.
It’s not to be confused with regret, but rather the bracing of one’s mortality in the face of the life one has begotten. It’s the judgement one makes of one’s life when one has decided somehow, one’s life was worth enough to bring forth yet another. And yet another.