pullover raze you must be the only person alive who would cut french onion chip dip with water to make it last a little longer. you bought iga cola instead of coke so you could save ten cents. you waited until the cheapest bread you could find was on sale. you bought as much as you could carry and threw what you couldn't use in a chest freezer in the basement. i used to stand there in the laundry room with the light turned off, feeling those frozen loaves between my fingers, imagining they were cold stones i could kill you with. you spent ten grand on a seven-day cruise but wouldn't let anyone drink anything on the boat that wasn't free. you saved more money than you could ever spend and stole from your own children to keep your bank account fat and happy. for christmas one year you bought me a blank tape. not a package of three or five or ten of them. one tape. the year i turned fourteen, you gave me a collarless white pullover. you told me i was getting more expensive to buy for. you didn't try to hide how much that made you hate me. i wore the shirt when i was high, and on at least one of the days when i was sure i would die. i wore it in the summer with the sleeves rolled up. i wore it the winter i was too sick to stand. i used to think those were the best weeks of my life. no school. no you. no shape to my days. only this: the bed that was yours when i was growing in your belly, and the black vacuum tube-driven tv set you gave me that was no bigger than my head. every time i got up to eat or piss or shit, i watched the world spin. i felt like i could fly. the shirt is thinner now after all those years of being lived in. but it still fits. i think it always will. at least you gave me that much. 220313 what's it to you? who go blather from