to fall asleep, I’d try to swallow my tongue.  my words came by way of spelling bees judged by scarecrows.  my father would’ve drowned had the rope not snapped him back.  it was a story he told to knock a letter from poverty.  my mother worried off and on how close I was getting to my childhood.  she looked at me like a pill as if to say dissolve already.  we lived in a room that for halloween went as a house.  that in the past had failed as a church.