Eye to Eye

In the story of my childhood I am usually elsewhere, a thin presence to myself, mumbling from a script of my own devising. It never occurs to me to wonder how my opposite number the hero might really feel: Hey, it’s hot up here! I’m tired of coming to the rescue of girls you’re too scared to say one word to. And how can you call yourself a pacifist & expect me to avenge all wrongs with my infallible fists?

Of unscripted moments, I remember few. I wreck every kite I ever try to fly in the mountaintop’s sideways wind.

Late summer of my 40th year, I catch an echo of my childhood in the nightly chorus of katydids, their camouflaged leaf-bodies falling out of & back into unison like a concert audience that continues its rhythmic clapping during a break in the music. I float on that throbbing: sleep is the only time I get to dream now. By day, I tread the high wires of the cicadas’ whine & press a cold watermelon to my belly – one sightless eyeball to another. Soon enough, all distance will dissolve into a single arc of spent sugar. The half-moon will rise a lurid red.