I no longer remember what it is like to bask shirtless with a garden against my skin, or for
someone to take a picture of my naked torso that they will actually develop at Walgreens.
Around then I realized that, in this world, there would be many instances when my body would not feel like my body.
Nakedness was swimming in the bay as the sunlight dimmed behind the apple trees,
and when we walked down the street and men smiled at us, they didn’t mean it like that.
I liked the way the dirt felt, all freshly dug, against my skin, and I asked my mother to bury me in it the way she sometimes did at the beach.
It is like a game to him, like one of those colorful woven tubes that trap your fingers when you exert opposing forces.
