Age About 30, I Stopped Looking Up

Childhood Was Terrifying For Me. A Kid Has No Control. You’re Three Feet Tall, Flat Broke, Unemployed, And Illiterate. Terror Snaps You Awake. You Pay Keen Attention. People Can Just Pick You Up And Move You And Put You Down.

If You Live In The Dark A Long Time And The Sun Comes Out, You Do Not Cross Into It Whistling. There's An Initial Uprush Of Relief At First, Then-for Me, Anyway- A Profound Dislocation. My Old Assumptions About How The World Works Are Buried, Yet My New Ones Aren't Yet Operational.there's Been A Death Of Sorts, But Without A Few Days In Hell, No Resurrection Is Possible.

In My Godless Household, Poems Were The Closest We Came To Sacred Speech -- The Only Prayers Said.

We Are In The Grip Of Some Big Machine Grinding Us Along. The Force Of It Simplifies Everything. A Weird Calm Settled Over Me From Inside Out. What Is About To Happen Has Stood In Line To Happen. All The Roads Out Of That Instant Have Been Closed, One By One.

He Never Gave Up On Me, I Only Stopped Being Matriculated.