And Gone

Haphazard forms in the bleak pre-dawn lurch toward unknown destinations, and I can't help admiring the silhouettes we make; outline and contour, and I think about charcoal between fingers and the quiet raking sound it makes on paper.

I think about guns today, and my brother's old habit of shooting outside my bedroom window, usually during those early weekend mornings. "Sighting in his gun" he called it. Though some mornings he was just content to rev his dirt bike and fly up and down the yard like a maniac. I may have been less angry about the noise if he had tried combining the two elements; firing his shotgun while airborne on a motorcycle. Now that would be a neat trick.

I always wondered how I turned out so different from the rest of my family; being surrounded by all the trappings of local culture, but not finding a sustained interest in any of it: hunting, dirt bikes, four-wheelers, et all. Ah, but who knows? I blame video games and a childhood aversion to high-velocity projectiles.