everybody hates chris hums on the television.
during commercial breaks, i stare at the ceiling,
feeling bed rest marooned.
cocooned in sweat-soaked blankets
dotted with crumpled kleenex
i ask myself for the first time:
“why am i alive?”

and it’s not that i want to die
although the strep throat
swelling up my lymph nodes
is hardly worth staying for,
but rather i ask what it means to be 10
and not able to see far beyond then
and where i fit into the hopscotch
criss-cross applesauce chaos
that is the world beyond the playground fence.

once im well again i ask my friends.
matthew strokes his hairless chin, then shrugs,
he doesn’t have time for existentialism,
he’s running late for cello lessons
so the question bounces off him like a
handball off a wall:
with a slap and a thump back down.

i ask tyler now.
he cares about me, but girls are gross.
he has a reputation to uphold,
which he won't if he tells me so.
he grasps for an answer,
not heartless, but manhunt tough,
“well, you make me laugh,
i think that’s good enough.”

that summer, he moved to texas.
facebook says he works at 7-11
and i wonder if on the night shift
when customers stop trickling in
and he’s mopping up puddles of slurpee
he remembers wrestling me on black top,
arms tangled in impossible knots,
fifth grade love and skinned knee blood
flowing between blows
and still laughs.