The Boy

was born and walked and said mom and stole first and saw a breast and kissed awkwardly and fondled a nipple and got a car and slipped into a girl in the car and wore black to receive the proper documentation from his high school and got on one knee in the wet sand and cried because he yelled at her and got sick and spoke softly to her stomach and held the little girl in his arms and told the little girl stories about people who might destroy her if she let them and held his wife for a very long time after they yelled and got sicker and got older and said goodbye with tubes like plastic arteries dangling from his arms and died.

When he died he remembered every moment since he was born and when he got older and sicker he wished he could walk and swing bats and speak to his mother who had passed and when he held his wife after a fight he felt her breasts pressed against his chest and kissed her and wanted to fondle her and slip inside her instead of drive away to work and when he told the little girl stories about bad people it was because he knew she'd get married one day and leave him and when he held that baby girl in his arms he wondered if she'd heard them say I love you from the womb and when he proposed to his wife by the ocean that night he thought of no future but her and when he graduated he worried about debt and the ring but not about sickness and when he was naked inside her across the back seat he did not imagine his child's face and when he kissed he did not understand the different things a kiss could mean like I'm sorry or I want to remember being happy or goodbye and when he pounded across bases the yelling seemed more natural and when he took his first step and spoke to his mother he knew nothing of the world and its hurting but would learn and when he was born he understood that he would never die.