Oh Mama, the monkeys never did come down the street. I tried, but they never did come. There was nothing in the back woods but woods.
The trees never moved an inch when we weren’t looking. All that thumping we heard must have been rabbits rabbits. No angels in the bushes.
No Indians underfoot. Just the boys hanging from their home-made houses, waiting for us to come close enough to catch.
That old beech I used to curl into never did know it. When I carved my name there, it never winced. It would have dropped me
like an apple for somebody else to bite, if it had apples. You were right. You can tell me all you want to now. That white sky
is just a lot of clouds moving together fast, not an edge of paper that somebody might fold, and if I’m having trouble with my breathing,
it’s that I’m still trying to make room for myself in an envelope that’s not even there. I never did learn the birds’ names, did I
but they weren’t singing to me, and the lilac blooming in the far corner of the back yard, never bloomed,
I know it now, for anyone.