kid raze i hated everyone who ever set foot in that house. even the animals that walked on four legs. when a bully and his best friend said they were going to break in and slit the throats of all the bodies that slept there, i told them to go ahead and do it. give truth to the lie of their empty threat. they didn't know that wasn't really my family. they didn't know i lived somewhere else. they were just two ten-year-olds born without souls. her back yard was too big to be real. i ate what i pulled from the earth with my hands. i stared at her compost heap and let myself wonder about the magic it made when my back was turned. so many nights i stood barefoot in the damp grass around her driveway and watched crickets rise up out of nothing like dark omens. i loved how the moon's faint glow danced across their glistening bodies. i still hear them all the time. but whenever i try to follow the sound to its source, all i find is sod and dirt. before what was left of autumn withered and died, i heard one singing through the membranous tissue that lined its tired legs just outside of the park. it was right there on the sidewalk. like it wanted me to find it. i hadn't seen one up close since i was a kid. things you're used to parsing out in the dark look different under the twin microscopes age and light make of your eyes, squirming with all the bald beauty of being seen. 221123 what's it to you? who go blather from