You. (Another story about who you might be, or any of us)

You are born September ninth, nineteen eighty-five in the cheap hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. You are a boy, and because you were born nine weeks early, and because of both genetics and your mothers smoking habit, you weigh only four pounds two ounces. You have a severe case of jaundice. You are put under the bright, bright lights at the hospital, and this will make an indelible impression on you. You will never know why, but your entire short, tragic life you will dislike brightly lit rooms.

Your mother loves you, but she is a troubled woman trying to climb her way out of a troubled life. She has to work because your father is not around, so most of your time is spent at your grandmother's. There is an absence of compassion in your grandmother's house, and you will feel this only as a vague sense of lack in the air. You will cry out from your crib, and no-one will come. Your soiled diapers will go unchanged for hours. All of this will play a part in who you are to become.

You take an interest in books at an early age, and spend as much time as possible in the library. You are too young to have your own library card, but the nice lady will sometimes let you carry books out, if you ab-so-lute-ly PROMISE to bring them back. You do, and you do. The books are always fiction, and they open up worlds for you. You began to consider that there may be a way out of Phoenix. That was a new and startling thought. It will consume you for the next five years.

At sixteen you cannot take it anymore. You have scars on your arms from where cigarettes mashed in, you have had two broken noses, black eyes, and a finger that now aches when it rains. All of these from your mother's boyfriends, whose first line of business always seems to be beating your ass. Your mother tells you they are teaching you to become a man. There are lessons you never wanted to learn. There are lessons you can't help but to learn. One is, you can go nowhere without money.

It is 3:52 p.m. on a Friday when you decide you cannot spend one more minute in Phoenix. You do not think, you just walk into the convenience store with your hand in your coat pocket. You tell the kid behind the register it's a gun. The kid is maybe three years older than you. He probably does not believe you, but he doesn't give a shit. He gives you all the money in the register, you are no enemy to him. You are leaving Phoenix.

You did not even know the man was in the store. He comes from the direction of the bathroom, and you feel it before you hear it... in your back as you are running out, with more money in your hand than you have ever seen, with vague ideas about buying a bus ticket. You feel the bullet slam into your mid-back, and then you feel nothing else, although you know you are falling. The blast of the shot is heard a moment later, and it seems very far away. The man stands over you, he looks embarrassed, as if he cannot believe what happened, then angry, and you will never know if the anger is directed at you or himself. "Oh Jesus," he keeps saying, "oh Jesus, hang on kid, you are gonna be okay.

He keeps saying that, long after you have stopped being able to hear it.