and I was left alone with their screams and my imagination and the pines were full of sap and the wind blew gently and the clouds did what clouds do and the houses were there and the cars were parked in the driveways and on the streets and the people walking by looked more affable than the ones I grew up with and I imagined myself living in their houses, riding around in their cars, taking walks with them on their streets because when the beer can snapped I knew a beating was waiting for me over something I did or did not do, it didn’t matter, it was just my time and when it’s your time, it’s your time and after the streetlights came on everything went black and the cicadas were silent and I walked back into the house because now it was my time to scream.