ALL THE LEAVES SEEMED TO BE BOWING

In homage to the rain about to come. His socks were too tight and his family was gone. Not for long, maybe a week. And now he had no idea what to do with himself. Waking up in strange silence, the stillness of their clothes and toys all around. "Hey, that's it!" he thought. "That's what it is, that's what it has always been all along- everything floats. No wonder I have never found a way to be human that has ever not felt wrong! Or who knows, maybe this isn't our life yet at all?" and just then a friend he hadn't seen in some time came up. They went right into it. It turns out his father had killed himself. He was only 3. And then only recently, he had found out that it was he and his uncle who had found him. He had no memory of it. But he had other memories of that time. Blisters on his feet from shitty shoes. Going to that barn, the same barn where they had found him. He said he remembered being the first to run down to see the new piglets, but now he thinks maybe there were no piglets. That maybe it was finding his father, and there had been some sort of protective reprogramming involved. But he had no interest in the subject. He had always been content to keep moving on. But there was another memory- one of their chickens had been bitten in half by their dog. "It just kept pecking away," he said, sort of laughing, "and the corn meal just spilled right out." Like