Rolling Stones: Reflections from Long Ago

My childhood memories consist of pandemonium that was interrupted, only briefly, when I ran away.  Those interludes of absence were distinctive as, especially in my younger years, I was only able to escape occasionally.  I vividly remember hiding in the dinghy.  I was content to be alone; I saw strange, disturbing, things in the company of other people.  I still do, but much less frequently.  What I remember most that day were my eyes.  They viewed the world in shades of gray.  I had blue eyes looking at a yellow world, so all of the colors became muddled.  I was rolling a marble. 

Then, Boo Boo-I think she loved me, but in all the wrong ways-came over.  I remember how she spoke to me.  She stood akimbo.  She demanded to know why I had taken off.  She proceeded in telling me lies.  Every word that came out of her mouth was false.  The sickly sun glared at an angle.  The dinghy rocked back and forth.  I liked looking down.  I flicked my marble, and it rolled across the deck until the dinghy lurched the other way.  Then it returned back to me, bumping against my toes.  I put it in my pocket.  I didn’t want to meet her gaze; I was afraid of what I knew I would see. 

She thrust a gift at me, perhaps in some perverse sort of bribery; one I knew didn’t belong to me.  I couldn’t keep it.  I flung the little box and a pair of goggles that had been sitting on the deck- they didn’t belong to me either-into the sparkling blue water.  It winked.  I wiped the tears from my sad face.  I thought of my father.  I cried some more.  I saw a Chinese paper lantern floating into the sky.  She grabbed me tightly.  After that day, I knew her intentions.  There was a sour taste in my mouth.  I broke free of her grasp and ran away as fast as I could. 

Yes, these are distant memories that linger in my mind.  I was so young that I understood the world in impressions that I’ve tried to civilize into coherent thoughts.  I was small then, and I felt it too.