I have peeled the rotting pears from the pavement,

there was a nostalgia to the smell, Manischewitz on a Saturday morning. In the great expanse we call hosing down the back porch, there is discovery and overzealous triumph. I can’t quantify the known world, I don’t have enough hands to count on. As Milo licks the excess gardenhose water off the ground and the sound of the neighbor-children joyous on the trampoline echoes into all the yards, I retain too many uncertainties to basque in the fortunate sun. I haven’t yet figured out how to spend my days. The hours and minutes kick up and float away like attic dust. I dream a lot. Awake, asleep, it doesn’t matter, the movie doesn’t stop, no intermission or bathroom breaks, sticky popcorn littering the floor of the theater. What is one to do in this world? I can’t define “success” just as ants can’t define the pile, or a cushion its feathers. I’m not one to know with certainty any pronouncement of self. I’ll ride the tide and become beached on all the dunes. I was so sure at one point in my life, yelling in all the ears (my own the loudest), shouting about knowledge and truth, a carved stone. I’ve softened since, finding uncertainty in every crevice of existence. Unanswered questions are my lifeblood. I’ve come to appreciate this flubber-state, bouncing from one horizon to the next, waving to the crickets and skyscrapers as I pass. I have dug so many holes in this yard, to China and back and I’m still playing in the dirt. Making mud castles and rock sanctuaries, a shovel in the pit of my stomach, an arrow pointed at the sun. It’s a salamander’s heaven, a pair of eyes peeking over the fence onto the Sandlot junkyard of my heart. Every time I think I got it figured out, what I’ve really done is discovered another door opening up to an unending series of glass houses, light reflecting and refracting through the walls and corridors, a diamond earring and a whisper. If you find yourself with me maybe we can hold hands and laugh at the absurdity of it all, and ask each other all the questions we’ll never have answers to.