born into the mouth of Africa, raised on real mango. crashed from a treetop crooked and spent months mechanically stretching his legs back out. friends with Momodou. British education. aborted A levels. drove to the city with his civic engineer father, a black car?
his mother described once the black car and his father leaning on it, dashing. likely in a gray suit, hair smooth. the gestalt swallows the boy who becomes my own father. washes of sand, topaz, tiger’s eye wavering with heat, like the first dream I remember.
in that, we each ride on elephants, my own family. there’s no story. nothing happens. I cannot imagine him unshielded to the world, going to school every day. eating someone else’s cooking. a little brother. I spend so much time worrying I have forgotten something of my own childhood, but here is the real amnesia. in one image, he is Poseidon in olive trunks, a wet black curl and black prickled jaw. lifting a baby from the bay.
for example, I never knew him before the white cell of hair centered above his forehead. for example, he has no middle name. for example, I imagined him a supervillain when I peeked at his work e-mails and he snapped. some satyr in a glade.
can you imagine, my mother said, when I met him he ate cereal. when he totaled the car he didn’t tell me for months. he didn’t tell me at all, I walked out and saw its smashed eyes. he is easily hurt, and like me, he thinks strangers dislike him. Atlanta is nice, he says. I didn’t finish that semester, he says, because I couldn’t do it. how do you want your eggs, he asks.
