30.5

perhaps this is where it gets patchiest

i remember my mother kept multi-colored sugar crystals in a pretty vase/bottle thing on top of the stove
she’d give us a few in the palms of our little hands when we were good

i remember one time trying to reach up onto the stove to get it
and knocking down a pot of boiling water
scalding my chest
— i think i had to go to the hospital
— i think i had a gauzy-bandage covering my entire chest for a few days (or weeks?)

i remember microwaving M.U.S.C.L.E. men, watching their pink bodies distort and meld; the stink

i remember the toaster catching on fire

i remember my mother screaming at me about knocking over some of her potted plants

i remember sitting in trees in the back yard
feeling the trees
supporting me
feeling their life
— they were my friends

and the turtles and the frogs
i would be scared
but touch them
catch them
make little houses for them

they’d die
or i’d let them go
or they’d escape
and i’d find other ones

my brother (or father) decided to keep a stray dog
golden retriever/yellow lab mix
they named her Cindy
and she was often moody
sometimes violent
sometimes playful
she liked to hump us
and we pretended to be scared of it
but i think we all liked it: i know i did

we had two close neighbors who were friends
i think one was called Brian Ellis (maybe?)
we would play with dandelions’ white puffy heads
and lay down on the earth, trying to feel it’s warmth (this probably happened later)

the other was called Neil — ah, what a story

there were two other boys who lived down at the end of the row of houses
their father was a welder
and their mother used to dress them up as girls before she actually had daughters

then there was that kid who was actually from a farming family
he didn’t live in the row
but in an isolated house in the middle of the field (right?)
and i remember seeing mushrooms growing in his ears.