Somewhere near the turn of the century, the walk was hot enough to burn your feet.
Sometime after that I was born in Phoenix.
My sister and I threw paint over a cardboard box in the garage and called it a spaceship.
My grandfather was too tall to be an astronaut, but now plastic tubes in his lungs keep him tied to earth while he waits for sixty years of smoke to catch up to him.
When we were younger, he drove us to the beach on the Chesapeake where we’d look for shark teeth.
Before that, A German Shepherd ripped a hole in my cheek.
Sometimes I feel the rough little scar inside my mouth.
But more often I see round little scar on my hand
When I was nine, my father taught me how to climb rocks.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh left on the granite.
Then a lake broke my mother’s back after she jumped in from the same height as I did.
We decide to hike from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney, and I walk most of the trail ahead, by myself.
But at night we all play harmonica and yell because we are the only ears around.
On the stage, we yell because our ears are tired of being lonely.
Then we’d stumble drunk and put out cigarettes on each other’s hands.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own *****.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own blood.
And later I would let a lover sink into her own mind.
Now my sister sees me through a screen, a brother is all foggy in Seattle, and my mother and father miss the way I’d play music all the time.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh you left behind.