As a Boy

I was born in a hospital that is now a Megastore. As a boy I looked up at the passing, cheek-pinching people with wide, watered eyes. A doctor told my mother that I was stupid because I never spoke. My shirts were striped until a fat boy made fun of them, then they were striped no longer. My favorite word was fuck. I started fires and kicked in mud and pushed the skin from my knees and elbows onto the rocky concrete of whatever street my family was currently living on. I cried in closet corners and pushed a car lighter into my hand to prove that it would hurt, because there was no other way of knowing for sure. As time passed the little electro-magnets that are installed within all girls began pulling on the iron in my blood. I walked through the threshold, passing from a world of quiet shame into one of pure-white confusion. I hopped through hoops, crossing ploys off the list with each crushing failure. Most of my time was spent down in the hole, so deep that it began filling with water. This is not uncommon.