toy tractor

Sometimes I feel like I hardly know where I’ve been raised. Like for a while I forget myself & feel like I was raised with all the world. And I have a difficult time finding the way back to my boy self, in our hallway, sitting on my legs outside the bathroom door, running a toy car over the carpet harder & harder, thinking and saying the word crucify, crucify, crucify! racing the car back and forth trying to remember what was around that word. I remembered the people seemed mad. Crucify him! I pressed the wheels of the car deeper & faster over the carpet, crucify him! crucify him! It felt good to say it, to be apart of the chant. Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify. then I stopped. Dad was the only one home. I knocked on the bathroom door. “Dad? What does crucify mean?” There was a long pause, like he didn’t want to be interupted from the paper. “It means to kill,” he said. I went back to playing with the car, crucify him, crucify him, crucify. I said it slower & softer until I only whispered it.