—I DON’T SAY WHAT’S ON MY MIND QUITE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT ME TO

 

 

Some Days a Rain Begins

 

Every day he looks for reasons to live. He asks the trees, “Why?” He asks the sunshine. Sometimes a robin will bounce on the lawn as if the grass is electrified and he will ask it, “Why?” but the bird won’t answer and will take flight instead.

 

At night, he counts breaths, often getting to fifty thousand or more. People have pastimes, he thinks, and mine is tallying inhales.

 

When he was even younger than he is now, his mother held him to her bare breast. Feeding time. “I almost did it,” she said. “I almost aborted you,” she hushed, thinking him too young to comprehend.

 

He was precocious, the same way the moon and mountains are. He saw and heard everything the universe availed, often all at once, imploding in his brain like The Big Bang. The collision was impossible to avoid, impossible to explain. It just was, same as the boy was just him because his mother had not aborted.

 

If she had, I would not be here, he thinks, on a regular basis, as habitually as breathing.

 

Some days a rain begins, warm and dewy, as if the mist is perspiring, and he will not think of anything for as long as he can lock down his thoughts, which is never more than a minute.

 

Sitting in the frail rain, the neighbor’s long-eared dog lopes over and noses his elbow until the boy crosses his legs so that the dachshund can nest there. If the boy is quiet enough, he’ll hear the dog say, “This is nice,” or “Do you love me?” If he is tranquil enough, the dog will trust him with its soul and begin to share all of the secrets that no human has ever heard before.