elegy for childhood

fabricated remnants of childhood remains. a noun we cannot touch. there are no limits to this catchment zone. you said zone to refer to many things; primarily thematic delineations. what remains are shards of bone. dead boy mix tapes. scraps of cloth hugged into animal shapes. somewhere a bridge might house the things we left behind. then again, semiotics may no longer prove useful; light may no longer burn within. earlier we performed repairs using needle and thread, torn cloth, grandfather’s used underwear. however, this was not the correct material to fix every tear, and you had a bus to catch. i tried to remind you when it wasn’t our stop. all my emails were sent too late to be of use. wifi is unreliable where you’re going. they used the same stuffing to fill your shirt inside grandfather’s sweater; shaking means the material is working. stuff it down into the holes so that no cloth is wasted. the first year onboard i made many errors, but after each mistake you helped me clean my tears off the console. we’re all suffering electrical defects of a kind. if only i’d kept those drawings, if only i’d mailed you that belt. i continue to listen to the music you sent, but even backwards there are no hidden messages. every sickness is more severe than the last. i don’t know what happened to those plastic glasses you used to wear. i am using the word ‘matter’ to refer to the physicality of the object.

shhh—the creatures are listening.