i remember lying to my mother, telling her that my father and i climbed mountains, i call him kieth, and that he slipped but i saved him, i told her he slipped and couldn't see, so i pulled out a big fan and blew the clouds away and pulled him up. it was the first time i realised that somebody could tell when i was lying. what had actually happened was kieth tried to take me bunjee jumping, but i got scared so we went to the hotel he was staying in and i made him watch me do back flips on the bed, then i slipped and fell on my neck and he was on the phone but he said "oh honey, are you ok?" i told him yeah, that i was strong and the bed was stupid and then i went to the bath room and cried and tried to move my neck. i can't remember how old i was and past the bathroom, i just remember that he always smoked cigars around me and the hotel was bright enough to give me headaches.

i also remember listening to the radio and sucking on a dry cigar in kieth's car on the way to visit his grandfather, and he pointed at smoke stacks and said "i work for them" and i said back to him "mom says that big smoke houses are killing me." and he just laughed, i thought he was laughing honestly, but i think now that he was real mad or something. and we got to his grandpa's house and mom told me later when i was older that his granddad was more or less his real dad, that he was a kid with a bad dad. he and i slept in a den in the basment, it was lined with christmas lights, it was cold with snow outside and all that other december stuff, we were on the edge of a forest someplace in tenessee and i met kieth's grandfather and he told kieth to make sure he didn't let my mom make me a sissy. we went hunting together and i got knocked on my ass when kieth let me fire a shotgun, i don't think i was older than 7. in the end we killed a deer and i felt good cause kieth let me bite another cigar once i shot it.

i remember spending most my time in the den looking at the dead bodies and naked african girls and cave drawings and baseball photos in all of kieth's copies of national geographic, i hid them as best i could if he saw me looking at them, i was embarrassed, i don't know why though.

in all of my memories it amazes me the things i forget, i know grandpa didn't live alone, but i couldn't remember anybody but kieth and me and only one time grandpa, standing by this old manual water pump that were all over my childhood, in the cold air his boots in the snow, looking like he only half of a grown up man. i thought he was going to fall over and disappear the whole time.

and i remember going to stay with kieth and his new wife, belinda, who hated me i think cause i was like a living symbol of kieth's first wife and all. and i told one of the neighbour kids that i was fucking kelly from the power rangers, but really i had a crush on my step sister who was 11. i was embarrassed of this too and when i was older i was riding in my uncles truck, this big old truck for hauling cargo, and i was with him and my cousins and i felt so damn close to them, so good about being there and unlce richard was telling us stories of the fighst he had gotten into when he was a teenager, so i said " i have a crush on my sister." and uncle richard was quiet for a few minutes and didn't look at me at all and said "that's disgusting." i kept anything i had to say to myself around uncle richard for as long as i can remember.

leaving belinda's trailer house in cold air, the kind that hurts to breathe and getting in the car, not knowing anything about what was happening and seeing from out of nowhere incredible light shapes, blinking and blazing and standing completely alone in all the dark. i kept hitting my head on the window to look closer and fogging the glass and writing my name in it and seeing my fingers and the letters of my name mixed with the amazing lights, i mean these lights were really something, i thought god had made them and when i asked i heard belinda say it was stupid, but kieth said "maybe", seeing my hand on top of those lights and my breath putting them out of focus and all, well i felt invincible i think.