Between the first
and the last—
and the only
period he'd
thus far managed
to petition to paper—
and the cursor
blinking on—and then
off again
half a second later,
came the realization—
that
as far as
any good narrative was concerned,
there wasn't
so much—a little gap
as there was
quite a bit
of overlap—
between
the he
who'd be re-
reading the thing
thirty years afterward—and his dad
at age four
or five—a careless blonde boy,
naive
and blind
to the poverty
of this very moment—
whose thick
artless cheeks
and scared
little smile
he'd never
even thought
to pause—and examine
until now.