Having observed others and containing the self consciousness of a noticer (do other people look at me the way I look at them?) she would dress in old borrowed clothing that smelled like other peoples’ laundry and leather because secretly she wanted to wear the other people try them on and she had this wrinkle between each brow that made her look just sort of worried no matter how she tried to press and smooth that wrinkle down with her thumb and in very private moments she’d stare at her features in the mirror with a sort of curiosity because she’d been told by leering men that she was beautiful but sometimes she saw only features: Nose eyes mouth all in pretty good proportion sure but she supposed the thing that held her curiosity was not her face itself but rather the disconnect between the face and the universe of thought behind it and all this she’d marveled at a very young age as ma would see her staring at herself in front of the bathroom mirror or in store windows and tell her not to be so vain kid to hurry along
And so she feared writing about her own vulnerable beauty for fear that she might be both of those things—vulnerable and beautiful. Instead she would take an hour long train ride, fake-dozing so as not to be ticketed, walk anonymous between busy persons until she reached a place that satisfied her Washington Square park, perhaps, or some small playground on the lower east side, or down by water or the hip corner shops in Brooklyn. And there, in strangers, she would find her vulnerable beauty, and there with the aid of a pen they became her and she became them.

I remember not too long ago I was just a little boy playing ball in the park it was Little League in the heat anyone in south Florida will tell you “it’s normal” and it’s true it really is normal.

Then it began to rain lightning struck the adjacent field and left a **** in right somehow for some reason the lightning warning system never sounded its fifteen second alarm I wonder why.

Imagine this

A crash as loud as if you were wearing a stainless steel stockpot and someone struck it so hard with a metal spoon and soon you were knocked so silly you felt like the Liberty Bell the day it rung then cracked during the funeral of former Chief Justice John Marshall and you thought you were dead too.

I thought I was a goner so I bolted to the dugout like lightning no pun intended but I didn’t want to be toast.

As the team sat there each about eleven and twelve years old we counted seconds between lighting and thunder between light and sound and what we felt were going to be the very last seconds of our young little lives how naïve we were.

One lightning strike cracked so bright it flashed me to today and here I am at twenty-two not dead just yet and I’m not quite sure how or why maybe there’s a purpose maybe there’s a meaning to life it’s a philosophical thing to sit and contemplate existentialism is such a weird weird thing I think.

I have come to believe that there are multiple reasons for life and one’s to die one’s to survive one’s to figure out every answer to every question and acquiesce all that which satisfies our wants and needs and one’s to love and give and take and share a life and one’s to see all there is to see like cityscapes and oceans and stars and countries one’s to see even more like frowns and births and smiles and deaths and one’s to eat all there is to eat and to drink all there is to drink until we finally figure out a way to accept the inevitable.

Or is the inevitable not inevitable?

What if there’s a way to live forever and there are no consequences extraneous to those of regular everyday life and you can choose to accept the inevitable when you choose to realize that it sure is inevitable?

Ooh-aah! Ain’t that a concept?

This is not quite what I had in mind at birth I thought it would be smooth sailing between fits of crying and long hours of slumber and meals and short naps and diaper changes and seeing my parents’ faces and those of all others gazing about me in awe and wonder and amazement and pride and love I was a deity!

Relative to twenty-two years one figures out that being a god is very short-lived and that twenty-two years ain’t very long hardly even a quarter of the way to the brink of a timely death.

Maybe when we’re babies we’re gods and idols and think about this babies can rule the world if only they knew they command the highest of all expenses in the whole entire world and families and friends willingly shell out money and goods and services for such a tiny little sack of fat and muscle and fastly-forming bones and brains.
Babies are ******* gods.

But gods no less.

My God I wish I was a baby once again.

But I’m twenty-two and slowly but surely growing old living through each quickening day by day by day and so on and so forth it’s been a fun trip so far and I am sure not done so long as there isn’t another flash from the lightning to send me straight to forty-four or eighty-eight—it doubles every time ain’t that a ****** shame?

There are so many voices,
Telling me about their choices,
Their words echo in my ear,
Only intensifying the future's fear;

I'm reaching the top of the mountain called childhood,
I'm growing up and life,
Begins its own complications;
People start nagging me,
Through their loud voices,
To make my choices;

This or that?
Go to college or stay at school?
Am I really smart or a brainless fool?
Oh God, this is so not cool!

People urge me to choose,
"Darling," they say, "What is there to lose?"
Oh God, I don't want to be forced upon!
Oh God, the childhood days are really far gone!"

There are so many voices,
Telling me about my choices,
I don't listen to them,
Instead, I follow my own voice,
In making my life-changing choice...