precipice.

It's like the time when I ran away from home and slept in the back of my parents' van and no one could find me. I always liked to run away from home. As I got older, running away from home simply meant putting a sheet over the small table in the living room and hiding there. Or it's like the time when my seventh grade science teacher caught me writing the animal kingdoms on my palm and I said that I wrote them there to help me study and then he watched me wash my hands in the sink. Yes, it's like when I watched the black ink melt from my skin and dance with the water all the way down the drain. Or no. It's more like when my dad found his old projector and we sat down to watch slides of my parents traveling around America. From place to place, new smiles, new outfits, new beards, new feathered hair styles. Then one picture wasn't so pleasant. We packed up the projector and put it back in the closet, way up at the top so us kids couldn't reach it. I don't like to think of that time. So I'll say it's actually exactly like my first boy-girl birthday party. We clustered into Sam's garage and kissed and played cards and drank Coca-Cola. Every discovery was an epiphany. Every new song sounded the tune of the rest of the summer. Every smile was charged with children on the edge of awakenings of so many sorts. Yes. Yes. It's just like that. All of the pride and suspicion and excitement and apprehension and hunger for more.