“Boys Don’t Cry” by Sean Mclain Brown
Because I cannot know when a river will run dry, or when the measured pulse will quicken and end, I imagine. Like months of remission, memory regains what is lost by lying to me. The river cannot remember flooding anymore than I can remember my father’s face, hidden in that cloud called childhood. I was born in a city surrounded by water; sloughs and rivers, lakes and oceans. Where I was born, people rely on season, weather. Our neighbor bent down, scooped a handful of spring dirt to his nose and breathed deep and said, sure to be a drought this summer. Sure enough. Because I cannot know when it will rain, I imagine. Something green and woodsy. Acres and acres of solitary green. I lose myself in it. James Wright said, I have wasted my life. He meant me. It has been said that stones of the river have sucked men’s eyes dry. I go to the river banks everyday and imagine.
Copyright © Sean Mclain Brown, 2010