091218 a file cabinet opens and closes a bank building from the 1800s glistens in the dust covered sun a piece of moss drips off the edge of the waterfall an important article tumbles down the street and comes to rest in a patch of asphalt, ripgut grass, an egg carton, and the unfocused dreams of childhood a spring inside a clock rusts and locks up; it is now forever 5:31 airplanes slice up the dome of the morning sky the carpet on the stairs thinks fuzzy thoughts another story is added onto a new building near downtown you bought a small refrigerator every time the elevator passes the fifth floor, it makes a dampened dinging sound, like a please ring for assisstance bell but you were resting your hand on the bell part five people get off the bus and go in different directions i think i know you from someplace the only bar that’s open this early opens a short tough man with a recedeing hairline and a leather vest emerges fromt he streetside door like a cuckoo from a clock and begins sweeping the sidewalk his leather vest smells lightly of oil, his chest is solid not hollow and his movements own the space they take up you finger the parking validation ticket in your pocket until it becomes furry an empty storefront features a broken shelf, a chipped mannequin, and a squire white cocktail napkin with something written on it in ball point from a long time ago there are bears down by the stream when you wake up you wanted to go fishing but they beat you to it aspen lives giggle and riot and don’t pay attention to anything the robins are saying there are two gallon jugs of milk in the door of the refrigerator. One has a baby nursery blue cap and one has a marzipan yellow cap. You can’t remember what that kind of sugar is called. Everything rich eventually rots or turns to acid. The train is nine minutes late. Bubbles make their way stoically up the sides of the glass, on their way to-- oblivion? Four sparklers leftover from the fourth of july find their way into a shoebox behind the bed you got from your adopted sister in law’s grandmother who died. Someone’s making noise next door. There is a shipwreck at the bottom of the barthtub. Backyard looks like it shouldn’t be one word. They opened up the house one night in late summer and the whole front of the house was a secret lounge with portico and bay window and patio and balcony and mezzanine, but when it’s not opened up it’s just a regular house on a regular residential block. You’ve never seen it since that one night. You don’t even know where it was, exactly. It’s almost as if you dreamed it, but you’re a hundred percent sure you didn’t dream it. You forget to do your reality checks. You can’t be dreaming now, because you can read. #pdp Why can you read? You can read because your brother could read, and you did everything with him. You can read because your mother read to you, and you loved her so fiercely. You can read because you were surrounded by books and good questions. Why do so many kids not have that? How could so many kids have grown up barely knowing how to read? What are you supposed to do with those kids? Why dnn’t they want to read? Is that it? Were they never taught to *want* to read? How can you teach someone something they don’t want to learn? Negligence in the area of distillation or even just encouragement to want to read is akin to a slow motion form of brain damage. Who the hell am I to think I can do anything about that? I’m not a goddamn brain surgery. It is brain surgery. It is rodket science. And I’m just this semi-balding grown up child from missouri who likes biscuits and typing and coffee and waking up early and to read. I mixed my verbals on purpose. I have to let you know that so you don’t think I’m dumb. Oh god, I cringe so hard to think of it: looking back at the poem Dan wrote, I mean my actual response to him was good, but I was so condescending to him in my mind as I read. I thought he was trying to be like me. Can you imagine! He used words like “deep-seeded” and I was like oh god, don’t you know it’s deep-seated, but he had done that on purpose. He used the word “ex-patriot” and I was like you poor thing but now I realize he knew perfectly well what he was spelling and he didn’t mean ex-patriate. In fact the whole thing was so much better put together, so much more coherent... He was so much smarter than I gave him credit for, and I was so much more obtuse than I gave myself credit for, in those days. It’s absolutely no wonder that it took me so long to become an actual teacher. I was such a presumptuous little jackass. A jackass with a big crush on a beautiful man who was probably kind of into it, kind of gay, but couldn’t admit it because of church and god. Or maybe I’m just being presumptuos again. I don’t know, but if you look at some of the stuff I wrote to him, holy shit. I can write a mean love letter! Without coming right out and saying it. I mean, it’s like a saran-wrap thin membrane between what I said and what I actually didn’t know I wanted to say. Just like this.