The Birth of the Sun
I was a famous artist once. In kindergarten our teacher told us to draw a picture of our mother. I did, and truth be told I wasn’t happy with my crayola rendering. It was terrible. The legs were two different sizes and the hands were just circles with little jagged sticks for fingers. The hair was even the wrong color of red. I took it home and showed it too my step mom and she cried and cried. I was baffled because I thought it was a shit drawing. I didn’t realize she cried because my drawing and her both had red hair. I’d called her mother for the first time.
At the time I thought she cried because I was such a great artist. In fact, it all went to my head. I began to drink pink champagne and bought a Chevy Monte Carlo. I was dating the prettiest girl in first grade. I wuz flat out ballin, son. Then I lost that match of Red Rover Red Rover and the darkness overtook me.
I had a reoccurring dream that summer about an owl that lived in the woods behind our trailer. The owl sang me a lot of songs about grief and arrogance until the night after the 4th of July I finally understood and set fire to the woods.
That fire has burned for four and a half billion years.
