A young boy: a teeth-losing, passionate welt on his parent’s calloused hands. They always work on the train! We live in a train!! A boxcar that Dad helps me get into— all covered in soot and heat. Summer’s got me waking with no breath. I’m a seabird on a washed up trunk now! I’m an elephant with rainbow angel wings!! I can make fly those salt shakers and trays straight across the back kitchen at Marie Callender’s. If they want to take my toys, I’ll throw theirs. Parents are for only so long anyway, right? My wrongs are just hundred year old songs they forgot. Their parents let them forget me. Parents lock doors. Parents forget: we have so much fun together!— especially me and those carpet cleaners. I liked the one toy, or the new ones anyway— like the pie crusts and dining room chairs and waffle makers! They didn’t answer when I wrote to them, traced the words I knew into the soap-filled carpet, which made me throw knives like a tantrum. They won’t respond to the banging on the walls of the boxcar. They’ll just keep working. I don’t like that. I want them to stop. So I show them my toys and they
Stop, everyone! Our child is lost! O, he is gone!
How can we go on? How will the colony
prosper in spite of tragedy?!
I know it is merely the first of many…but his spirit *
* (Will). To will
everyone around…undo the latch and see..*..