Fact or Fiction

At summer camp, a boy pulled down

his swim trunks in front of me.
I told one person, who told another person,
and word ended up getting back to him.
He said he never did such a thing,
and I began to wonder if I had actually seen anything
or had just imagined the whole thing.

Some mornings, I have such convincing arguments
in my dreams
that I wake up intensely mad at someone
for no legitimate reason.

When I read novels,
my scrapbook of memories becomes
photo-bombed by imposters:
Daisy Buchanan sits between me and my grandma
at my cousins wedding,
Holden Cauffield scowls at the camera
as he pins a corsage to my prom dress,
Hamlet proudly holds up
his pickle-on-a-stick at the state fair.

I find myself flipping coins when I blink;
debating what is fact or fiction;
if I actually saw a spider crawl
across the kitchen  table or if
it was just a stray car headlight
that had crept through the blinds
of my peripheral vision.
Then again, maybe it was both.
Maybe truth is always both,
like a piece of glass that refracts light
and then takes it back; a He loves me/
He loves me not dandelion in a windstorm,
vacillating between promises
and letdowns.

After about an hour
of lying on my back at Pebble Beach,
patiently waiting, watching,
as my family saw dozens of shooting stars,
did I finally see one? Or had I just wanted
so badly to watch something other than me
tumble through space?
Then again, maybe I had been bathing in them
the whole time.

Here’s to Wherever We Are (The Greatest Feeling Is…) *

When everyone is in the car,

all supplies loaded and ready,

seat belts click,

engine purrs,

switch transmission into drive,

and we nudge forward

just a few inches

towards the highway

that will take us

to heres wherever we are.



* For all my brothers who feel everything click once we pull onto the entrance ramp.

30!

When I was just starting to cut my teeth on reading,
foraging for books like an ant for sugar,
I came across Walden Two, a faded edition
from the '60s with a cover so old it could crumble.

I hated the book. I'm not even sure if I finished it,
or left it shamed on my bookshelf
where it stays today. But I wish now
that I had asked where it came from.

From which airport which of my parents bought it.
How they read its gooey utopian premise.
Whether their hopes had been as high as mine.
Whether I freed it from the shelf
at the end of a previous sentence.