Why me? Why us? It was a question I and others asked as the wind approached and the lightning pitchforked along the horizon. None of us were worried about this upcoming thunderstorm. We were really worried that it would zap out Zenith television. It was the night we were set to find out Who Shot JR.?

I followed the line until it veered and wavered, no doubt with a mind of its own, following its own path, its own desires.

I have to become my own line.

The cocker spaniel provided the first clue. It no longer leapt onto the red flyer wagon. It knew the boy would not come by to pull it.
I was that boy. I was an adult now. The dog, somehow, had stayed young, bounding up to me, but no longer bounding up to the wagon.
He did not believe I’d used to the boy. I looked different, smelled different, petted him different. But it was still me. I’ll admit it: I had changed. And not for the better. For what is better than a young boy? A young anything?

Bluish light hit her face–hardly an assault of light,but definitely a wake-up call. She was in a place she didn’t wan to be. She’d allowed herself to be talked into this place.
Now she had to get out. She tried various doors. They were all locked. Finally she had to just break a window. Once outdoors, yellowish light hit her face. This hurt more than the bluish light. There was no other light. The outdoors was better than indoors and so she endured. Eventually she found peace. But it would not be until the light went from blue to pink to to a soft white before she would realize she was waking up in a park, at dawn.

Meant to treat, myself, to something decadent and sprawling, a dessert with no boundaries, colors suffused with sweetness that pinched my jaws and sprung tears to my eyes. I want treatment with helpless adoration.

I can’t believe my father is dead. He’s been dead for over thirty years. I was in my early twenties. He was an old man even then.
Now I’m in my fifties. I am not as old as he was, when he did. But I’m lot closer now, than I’ve ever been.

Her eyeglasses fogged as she ran down the path that cut through the park. Along the brook she heard the call of a bird she’d never heard before.
This made her stop. She waited for the bird to call again. When it did, she ran on realizing she’d heard this call before. It sounded like an old friend starting to tell a same story she’d heard before.

It came upon me overnight–this vast aching void that seemed to stretch between my rib cage to my toes and back up again. I thought I needed to burp.

Instead I noticed tears falling. Which felt as relieving as a burp. The tears were for never having brother. My life has been filled with cousins, sisters, nephews,aunts and uncles.

But not brothers. I noticed one appear in my dream, perhaps a miscarriage being from my mother’s previous attempts a pregnancy. He appeared older than me, taller, wiser, with gray around the temples. He told me, while standing in the backyard of my childhood home, between clotheslines flailing with bed sheets, that I needed be so backward looking. “Do not miss me,” he told me a deep voice that seemed at once to lay down the law while lilting toward comfort. “I am here.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Here,” he repeated among the bed sheets.

And as I woke up from my dreams I knew he meant that he was here in my dream.

But I wanted to be in his.

I had no idea about what had happened. I just caught snippets of words like “can’t believe” or “can’t believe it happened to her.” Sometimes I heard “him.” And that was my problem with eavesdropping on stranger’s conversations on a train. I got just enough to remind me of what people are capable of, but not exactly what they are capable of.

Peppering the light was his presence–its own spice that prickled my sense–making me want to sneeze almost.

Almost.

But then, as he drew closer to me, his eyes softened, their focus sharpened. The line of his mouth took on a pronounced border, a span of pink flesh engorged with sensuality, an intelligence in the whole movement. An inevitability that before I had time to realize it, pressed against my lips in a wondrous, warm kiss.