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A SELECTION OF EVENTS
WHICH LED TO THE DESCENT
OF MY INNER BODY TEMPERATURE:


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I was born blue. Pulled from my mother's womb by bright steel tongs,
my cheeks show faint grey marks from their bite: I can still see them.


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As a toddler I liked to dig.
Once in a flowerless flower-box on a long wooden bench by the back door.
Prying through wet soil with my fat little fingers, working the black dirt like bread dough,
looking for the world.


I may have found it.
Preoccupied by something else, perhaps a black ant on my foot,
looking back to the flower-box, a huge black worm thicker than my forearm,
writhing, its blunt faceless head looming towards me,
here I am, here I am.


I can't believe that such a worm exists, except then, in my small mind.


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I remember walking through the bright lobby, holding someone's hand.


I remember the dark room, the red velvet, the flowers everywhere and their sicksweet smell,
the red candles glowing in tiered rows on either side of the casket,
the waxen sheen on my Grandfather's cool grey face, his face of wax,
his face that would not speak, or smile, or open its eyes.


I remember running, the howl boiling up like thick lava from my tiny throat.


I remember standing lost in the parking lot under a cold sun,
holding someone's hand, someone looking down, someone wondering what to do with me.


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A vast wooded maze of cancerous nettles and old dying trees.
A polluted creek sliced through its heart.
In this creek we would find, at odd intervals through the years we played there,
an occasional dead dog, or an occasional dead cat.


One day, surprise, a monstrous bloated horse washed bald by the current,
its hide turned to brittle plastic by long hours under a hot sun.
Stood on a massive concrete drainage pipe high above the grey water, hurling rocks.
The rocks fell like gunshots,
plock,
loose jagged holes appearing under which the bloat would subside.


Occasionally, the sound of gas escaping.
Occasionally, a chunk of something would plop out.


The horse took this abuse placidly, its teeth bared in silent protest, eyes wild and glaring.


Fuck you we said.
Fuck you.


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And it was through these things, and more, that I became the man I am.


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