The manchild moved to where boys go to bald:
a forest of plaster, his language erased.
                        A terrier brushed his leg,
                        he longed to pet its fur. 

A boy and girl threw sticks at their ball in a tree,
he starved to reach up and embody their hero.
                        Into his open sore
                        he deposited an evening. 

He emitted more fluids than his liver contained.
He wondered why tattoos gave their harborers cool,
                        why men sported earrings,
                        why women sported earrings. 

He lay in the grass and drilled out his mind
for images that could untie old knots,
                        his sweater sleeves tie
                        around his hefty waist. 

He lay in the grass near beautiful girls;
eye contact was neither made nor kept.
                        Aspirations to jog, walk
                        the dog around the block.

He spoke to Mother and dead CEOs
in his sleep, and in his sleep
                        he heard himself talk
                        and was afraid to awaken.

A shuttle bus shuffled past, clicked violins
into position. Near Rainbow Falls
                        two years before
                        a tree with loose roots

upended uphill and fast-lanced down a gulch.
The forest grabbed at, hoped to stop, or slow it,
                        but it hit the creek,
                        with lugubrious force,
at which point momentum broke it apart.

He lay in the grass and imagined that tree
would still lie in pieces, cracked little verses,
                        at a low, low point
                        for a long, long time.

– AJ Urquidi