I wake disoriented, but I'm very sure it's me that's disoriented—a big improvement.

I know, without looking in the mirror and struggling to put a name to the face, that I've got brown hair, that I'm good-looking, that I do all right in school without really trying, that I've got a quick sense of humor and a little bit of a death wish, that I'm subject to schizophrenia that manifests as a conviction that I can change the past, that I do in fact change the past, all the time, that sometimes it completely changes my life.

Who I am, I know. Which parts of me are a fiction of my own construction, nobody knows. Least of all me.

I don't have any close friends, but everybody knows who I am.

It hasn't always been like this. Or maybe that's a lie.

I'm disoriented. It's like I rearranged my bedroom and my body, full of old habits, keeps taking me to where my bed used to be, where my clothes used to be. Is that my car? No, I don't have a car now. I'll call Jeff. But we live on the West Coast now, he's a thousand miles away, and we never met. Fine, I'll walk. I don't see Mom on my way out. I'll call her later. Idiot. She's been gone for four years.

It's leap year. I'm thinking of Polly again. I'm on my tip toes staring at her. Wanting to touch her face. Her skin is washed out but someone has tried to color it. If I touch her, I will cry. I press my hands together instead and walk away from the casket. There is no crying.

I'm staring at the ceiling in the dark. Faint light from the window spread over it in endless shades of gray. My eyes close as I think back. I'm staring at Polly again. She smells like medicine. Or hospital. Not like a person. I realize I can't breathe and sit up with a start. From under the floor I hear her mumbling. If I don't go to sleep soon I'll cry. She won't let me sleep. There is no crying.

The mud creeping into my shoes is icy cold. I have been waiting in the rain all day. My shivering is getting worse. I try to remember when she said she would be here, but I can't remember. It feels like it's been years. I have to warm up. I have to leave now. I walk inside through the back door.

Polly is laying in bed. She's hardly moving and her voice comes in whispers. William is sitting on the floor drawing. I sulk in the corner. He finally hands her a bird. She starts to cry when she sees it. He can't tell because he's too short to see over the edge of the bed. They make them higher in hospitals. Elevating the dying in their last days. I have to leave now. I walk outside as quickly as possible.

It's a bright, hot day. The neighborhood kids are running up and down some of the yards with a football. The oldest one of them is twelve or something. I join their game, and half a dozen of them hang on my arms and legs and can't tackle me. I am a giant among men. When they finally do drag me to the ground we're all laughing.

I'm watching the ants crawl around my foot. When I sat down, they were moving straight across the concrete. Now they dodge just below my heal. I look at the fourth floor of the building across the street. Polly is somewhere on that floor. It would only take me a few minutes to find her. She keeps asking to see me. I stare back down at the ants and wait.

I walk down to the beach. It's packed, because in a week or two it'll be too cold to swim. The rest of the day is pretty good. Girls and sun.

When the sun goes down I head home, but a breeze starts up and I'm freezing before I get halfway home anyway.

I start thinking about how things are now.

I've been putting this off.

Mom disappeared before my thirteenth birthday.

At the time Dad thought she abandoned us. That's what the cops told him. I don't know what he thinks now. I don't know what I think either. I saw her just a few days ago, but now I haven't seen her for years. Everything was different a few days ago. She was a different person. They both had jobs. I had a little sister.

It starts to mist. I run the rest of the way home. No sign of Dad. I get in the shower and turn the hot water on, but I can't stop thinking about Mom and Cass. Nobody else in the world would understand why I'm crying right now.

to the prime mover~

should you exist at a level where you both comprehend and care, please do not let me be judged as someone other than myself. do not let my decisions and actions turn me into something i dislike. let me be myself and loved for it.

just that

~ted

I tell everyone. It’s a big joke. “Oh yeah, prove it,” Sharon says. “Change something about me.” I could, but she wouldn’t know.

Someone always asks what if this or that, and I try to say, but it’s not that easy to figure out. They tell me it doesn’t make any sense, it couldn’t be that way. This always happens. “Look,” I say, a little mad, “everybody knows this stuff is confusing as hell. Didn’t you ever see…” I stop. I’ve never seen that movie either now.

I have changed things about Sharon. She has no idea.

It makes me sick to think about it. I have seen Sharon a lot of different ways.

This time, I hardly know her.