/merrillcole/

When I was a boy, the confectioner of mixed feelings had not yet opened his shop, mice waiting to gnaw encrusted corners, the paying customers feeling a little dirty. Shadows were more distinct and irony, an unknown country.

When I was a boy, the fever washed in and out. Sometimes it sounded sad, like a seashell held to the ear. I knew, of course, the sea wasn’t really there, that I wasn’t drowning at all. What he whispered didn’t seem quite so,

“You will miss this when you grow up.” Not the sticky hand inside my shorts, nor the hush money, but a horizon where something lay waiting just for me, the lynxes at alphabet’s end.

When I was a boy was an analogue for “when I was a boy,” 45 I could play and play until I was nothing but scratches and pops. The fever broke. I couldn’t taste the dirt and sugar, just a green seasick I couldn’t throw up.

He told me the words, “when I was a boy,” are a prompt for nostalgia, as if the shadows could turn back into ghosts. Yesterday closed its eyes, and the sea has lost its echoes.

The Good Men Project (September 2017).