and another thing i've never been able to write about from then. the dislocation. i was thirteen. dad had left four years ago. i went to his brother on an island in the northwest. i didn't know him well. he only appeared when dad left. in the place dad left, in the place far away. i suddenly woke up in the back of a microbus, being fondled by my father's brother. i can write about this. both of the brothers are long dead and gone. i'm here still, and i'll be gone. i can write, but for the moment, this moment, from that moment on, trying to articulate. now i go back to a writing class in southern illinois. the teacher wrote on my paper, it's as though i wrote in a no-place, there is no context here. now i think of the path of the moon around the earth, it seems like a dance, like a flower, a lonely dance with earth.