According to Appetite

Always wanting what I cannot have, always taking according to appetite and what the others will not know is missing. What we learn growing up. In Worthington, there was too much death, and all you knew was that it hurt going. Remember goldfish spiraling through dusty water in Woolworths? In certain ways my father was useless to me, in others I am so much his son there is literally no space between us. I also remember long hours by the lake in Burlington, Vermont, dreaming about what was on the other side but not traveling there. Freedom is as freedom does? We are given assignments and we can delay but not deviate. In fall the maple leaves detach from outstretched tree limbs and float to the earth. Homecomings? I was cold a lot as a child, often far from the house - and I learned how to call this isolation home - yet in another sense was on fire always in the Kingdom of the Lord. You learn that it matters, how you say things. Mazes, minotaurs, messes. At dusk mowing in more or less straight lines past headstones that were hard to read, not unhappy. You follow Jesus a long time before learning it's not followers he's after. Hours in the library studying, waking early to pray. Decades passed. Seeing myself everywhere now, as if the cosmos encourages promiscuity for a reason. You can't keep anything, especially love. Rose petals in John's Gospel, cover tearing off the family bible, and a sense that something vital has slipped - is slipping - away.