Vacant Apartment Building

 

I was probably five then and you like me, were still a young man with
unguided intentions. You drove me to your vacant apartment building.
One of those rare times when it was just us. We arrived and you
disappeared, into your work. And I for the first time, especially alone.

I roamed those dusty halls and echoing, dilapidated rooms, and felt
something unusual. Unwatched. A tick. An inclination to touch. Picking
up snails and beating the breathless piano. Creaking up the steps and
running down the rails. A sort of game on brittle beams. Some profound
independence, never able to test.

You never knew this but, I felt special that day, chosen, one out of your
three children to the place you spent wrecking your back. I then, did not
know you, truly, and you saw only some shape of me. In that time, we
both grasped into the air, flailing and reaching then failing.

How could we in that time even know ourselves?

 

~