swings across the room in bars, shaped by passing through my window frame. Light splatters, I know, on the outside of the house. I can almost hear the impact. I watch the hall light come in under the door. Light is a force, a wave and a particle. Light can touch me, and has to, actually, in order for anyone to see me.
Â
15
Â
SCHOOL BEGINS IN August this year. I live nearby, and so I walk and skip the bus. I read while I walk to school up the two hills, one sidewalk, a more or less straight line. I pretend the streets I pass through are empty. I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag. See me. I am five feet and two inches tall. I am still thin, freckled, large eyes, small nose. My hair waves and grows long, to my neck. I pick flowers for my mother as I walk. The neighborhood kids call me Nature Boy. I want to die.
Help with my roses today, my mother says. We have to deadhead. She hands me a glove and the shears; this is something I can do one-handed. While she walks around the house watering, I snip off the faded blooms, spotty leaves. It is the final day of August, the sun already has its mind on its vacation, distant skies. I pause, hold up my arm cast and the shears: Look, Mom, Iâm a crab.
She laughs. Blond and tan, a faint sheen from the hose gives her a glow. She squirts a pip of water my way and I yelp, dodging. You sure are, she says.
Later, inside, over lemonade and peanut butter and jelly, she tells me that Eric has called to say we have been asked to be a part of an opera this fall. A production of
Tosca
, she says. Heâs calling the boys he wants in advance, to clear it with their parents. Youâre supposed to act surprised when he announces it, because there is some small pay involved, the part is small.
Oh-kay, I say. Surprise. No problem. I push my hair out of my face. My hand as it goes by smells like the inside of the glove.
I guess he doesnât hold grudges, huh, she says. She begins putting away the lemonade, sets the jars of jelly and nut butter away.
I guess not, I say. Not until I go up to my room to get a book do I realize, I have no idea what she means.
Â
In my gifted-and-talented speed-reading class seven of us sit in a dark room with a projector that prints lines on the walls. We read stories in this way and then are tested for comprehension.
Today we begin Boccaccioâs
Decameron
. Jay, one of the more aggressive students, turns the machine on.
The story flashes by. The teacher opens the door, glances in. Oh, he says. All right then. And he goes back out. We sit, the story beaming on, punctuated by the projectorâs loud fan.
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And it pleased Him that this love of mine, whose warmth exceeded all others, and which had stood firm and unyielding against all the pressures of good intention, helpful advice and the risk of danger and open scandal, should in the course of time diminish in its own accord. So that now, all that is left of it in my mind is the delectable feeling which Love habitually reserves for those who refrain from venturing too far upon its deepest waters. And thus what was once a source of pain has now become, having shed all discomfort, an abiding sensation of pleasure.
Â
The
Decameron
was a collection of love stories told by ten people running from Florence during the time of the Black Plague. They told the stories to pass the time rather than playing games, at the direction of the Queen, traveling with them. Seven women, three men. Everywhere they looked, people dying. What a pleasure it must have been, I think, as the story flies up the screen in front of me in sections. To survive.
Afterward, the comprehension quiz asks, what were the afflictions of the Black Plague? And I write, bloody noses in the East, but in Florence,
Â
15
Â
SCHOOL BEGINS IN August this year. I live nearby, and so I walk and skip the bus. I read while I walk to school up the two hills, one sidewalk, a more or less straight line. I pretend the streets I pass through are empty. I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag. See me. I am five feet and two inches tall. I am still thin, freckled, large eyes, small nose. My hair waves and grows long, to my neck. I pick flowers for my mother as I walk. The neighborhood kids call me Nature Boy. I want to die.
Help with my roses today, my mother says. We have to deadhead. She hands me a glove and the shears; this is something I can do one-handed. While she walks around the house watering, I snip off the faded blooms, spotty leaves. It is the final day of August, the sun already has its mind on its vacation, distant skies. I pause, hold up my arm cast and the shears: Look, Mom, Iâm a crab.
She laughs. Blond and tan, a faint sheen from the hose gives her a glow. She squirts a pip of water my way and I yelp, dodging. You sure are, she says.
Later, inside, over lemonade and peanut butter and jelly, she tells me that Eric has called to say we have been asked to be a part of an opera this fall. A production of
Tosca
, she says. Heâs calling the boys he wants in advance, to clear it with their parents. Youâre supposed to act surprised when he announces it, because there is some small pay involved, the part is small.
Oh-kay, I say. Surprise. No problem. I push my hair out of my face. My hand as it goes by smells like the inside of the glove.
I guess he doesnât hold grudges, huh, she says. She begins putting away the lemonade, sets the jars of jelly and nut butter away.
I guess not, I say. Not until I go up to my room to get a book do I realize, I have no idea what she means.
Â
In my gifted-and-talented speed-reading class seven of us sit in a dark room with a projector that prints lines on the walls. We read stories in this way and then are tested for comprehension.
Today we begin Boccaccioâs
Decameron
. Jay, one of the more aggressive students, turns the machine on.
The story flashes by. The teacher opens the door, glances in. Oh, he says. All right then. And he goes back out. We sit, the story beaming on, punctuated by the projectorâs loud fan.
Â
And it pleased Him that this love of mine, whose warmth exceeded all others, and which had stood firm and unyielding against all the pressures of good intention, helpful advice and the risk of danger and open scandal, should in the course of time diminish in its own accord. So that now, all that is left of it in my mind is the delectable feeling which Love habitually reserves for those who refrain from venturing too far upon its deepest waters. And thus what was once a source of pain has now become, having shed all discomfort, an abiding sensation of pleasure.
Â
The
Decameron
was a collection of love stories told by ten people running from Florence during the time of the Black Plague. They told the stories to pass the time rather than playing games, at the direction of the Queen, traveling with them. Seven women, three men. Everywhere they looked, people dying. What a pleasure it must have been, I think, as the story flies up the screen in front of me in sections. To survive.
Afterward, the comprehension quiz asks, what were the afflictions of the Black Plague? And I write, bloody noses in the East, but in Florence,
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