justwrite 1 february

To begin at a more discrete point is to be indiscreet I can’t disjoint the past from the present and am hesitant to identify the priorities between now and then and what comes next the text too thick to read between the lines loosely defined as only two-point connectors can be the shortest distance the least resistance a path I’d rather travel less the wood too yellow too dark too deep too filled with allusions and I who have recently put on warmer socks can unlock my own bonus points the video games I never played replaced by educational conversational adaptational this is not what we call the muppet show but that too was part of the story I was born on a mountaintop and I was sleeping on the train I was listening to the cattle call the rain by the wrong name and I remembered I had been trying to say something different but again I drifted I was writing about beginnings I was sinking without swimming but that was only one time that was the clear cold water at the bottom of the woods where the mountain stood behind our trailer and the turtles rode each others’ backs to work it is with sudden surprise the only kind of surprise really that I realize this is not a picture I remember this is a picture I layer with details every time I tell it every time I smell it so close it’s a photograph I could not tell you how or what I was wearing I remember the face my father used to tell me this story and it made my heart remember but not that time not that moment was my face wrong did my heart stop how did they make me breathe again and the scan between facts and story gloss and I toss in more of the anguish the fear which must have been real an only child and too much space too free to see the danger in a clear stream working its way onward oblivious to the making of a memory