video games unplayed, histories confused.

I am completely tangled up.

Sometimes, Ari, it’s so hard to be your friend.

You stay with us,

you say you want help,

but you don’t tell us what’s going on with you.

You say you want to change,

but you are too busy feeling sorry for yourself!

His voice gets louder and louder, and then suddenly

trails off into quiet words:

Who do you think you are?

His words, finally, feel like a slap across my face,

and suddenly my fists clench.

Who am I? I yell back, my words echoing

in the hall, a defense, a learned movement

taken from my parents,

a higher pitch blown back at a defensive angle,

but hollow and with no teeth.

And in my mind, I ask myself,

Yeah, who am I?

My name is Ari Rosensweig.

Last year, I was the newest kid

at school.

I am a fat kid, and I hate it

when people call me Fatboy.

My life doesn’t feel good enough,

and I don’t know how to change it.

I start to make a story of defense in my head,

to answer the question of who I am

in one mighty sentence

or even to make another layer

of promise about getting revenge

for what happened on the bike path,

but Pick knows me too well. He knows

that I don’t want to fight.

Look, Ari. You always tell me

I am like your brother. Trust me.

I think we can make some changes.

I want to trust him,

like he’s my real brother.

He is trying to help me, I think.

He’s asking me what I am going to do about it.

Things calm down,

and we start talking about

the ways that the robots

in our game might adapt

to beach conditions.

By the end of the morning,

his words are at work,

and I feel that this summer

is already something else

than what I thought it would be,

not the end of seventh grade,

but the start of a new story

all my own.

The Nursery

My mother stops

at the first left

off Shoreline Highway

in Stinson Beach.

It’s an old, broken-down plant nursery,

a big gravel parking lot

with light-pink stones.

Vines grow wild over old

wooden fence posts

and rusting wire.

This is a place that could be anything.

We walk in slowly.

The place is open to the sky in every direction,

salt and wet air,

corroded terraces

covered with cracked plastic sheeting

and piles of collected driftwood,

ornamental and smooth.

A kitchen, bathroom with an old mirror,

and lots of tiny rooms for planting

and storage and everything else.

Space.

My mother walks to the center of the courtyard

and spins. She actually spins.

She does this in moments where things come together.

This, she says, is ours.

Ours. I say it to myself.

We look at each other,

unsure.