Saturday, September 24, 2016

EL CORAZON

It's a toxic world it's a tedious world and I don't have any answers for my son. I can Google the easy answers. Yes. Wolf spiders are poisonous. Yes. Juno is the space probe NASA sent to Jupiter but Juno is also an asteroid and Juno was the wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars. My life is ridiculous. When I'm dead my ashes will fill a plastic Wal-Mart bag. But I'm here now and it's Saturday, the one day a week I spend with my son. He's eight. His father picks him up from school and karate. When I was eight I walked home from Jefferson Elementary each day. I crossed a highway. I walked up ugly concrete stairs. I unlocked the door and I was home. There were three or four channels on the television. I don't remember what I watched. There was food in the kitchen. Fish sticks. Malt-O-Meal. Canned pears. There was no carpet on the floors. I was jealous of my best friend Jennifer because she lived in a brick house on a cul-de-sac and she had her own room and there was carpet on her floor and she slept in a canopy bed. She had a trampoline in her backyard. Her dad was an asshole but he was there and they ate real food. My son is eight but I ask him if I can mute Nickelodeon and read him a few sentences from a beautiful book. "I guess," he says. He makes bored noises. I read the first paragraph of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I want to cry I almost cry but I don't. I tell my son how the story ends. I no longer concern myself with blasphemy. My son is eight and he's like most people I know. He likes to choose his own noise. He abides my noise for a few moments then returns to his show. It's a tired world it's a tacky world and my son will find this out on his own but not for a while. God. Please. Not for a while. Let him remain distracted.

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