Seventeen

Somebody's son,

Boy

Can you tell

Where I stand with you

R u mine?

Love on the line (call now)

Telephone line

Bird's don't sing

Why won't they talk to me?

Because I'm me

Seventeen

Not nineteen forever

Stronger

I'm not a murderer, I swear.

When I went to the counting office that morning and they said that the list for the county was oversubscribed I knew what I'd have to do. There wasn't enough space for new children, they said.

He was old and frail. She was depressed and had dementia. They didn't have much of their lives left, anyway. You can hardly call it murder.

And now look at him. My new baby boy. All it took were a few visits to the old people's home, each day.

And now I could die - I'm so happy!

Not empty, a glass half broken.

Will you remember me? Of course.

Home left one day, without me.

The waterfall in the cemetery pattered down onto the rocks, droplets hanging in a haze, in a hover in the air. I stepped past and took a breath. I was only going to borrow something. A quick in and out.

I consider the horoscope for the day as perfect. My friends might glower at the mention of horoscopes - they never rate my use of such mystical guidance, but they haven't the seen the things I've seen, they don't know how much money I will have remitted to my family back home once everyone gets to meet my newest model. They don't know the extent of my project. Some may jump to false identification, calling her a monster, a hostile. Some may see her and take two steps back, reverse and run, screaming for the hills. But even so, I cannot wait for tonight. I can feel today is right, today is the day I reveal her.

I lift the old familiar gravestone and slide it aside. The darkness below seems to expand, and wash over me. I dig in with my hands and claw, scrabbling in the dirt. I know its down there. One last piece. Aha! I clasp the leg to my chest and dash from the cemetery, fast as a racehorse, the rainfall sloshing down the cobbled street in rivulets.

Back in my garage I fiddle for hours, stitching in wires between flesh, attaching touchpads to her toes. And then I'm done. I admire the automaton before me and smile.

I know the world will love my old mama. I made her back up, just right.

I know I'm not the only one

it echoes through my mind

that ethereal line

because to never be alone

even if

for a while

you forget

its what makes us human

to play those future games

we all live in the today, the pasts, the nows,

the pains, the fears - but its in the future

that we are truly free

in the future we can play games

like children in the yard again

mapping out our deep desires

plans of towering heights

you invent the future that you wanna face

a line that rings like an ace

in the mist of the future there is fear too

but only in the future, the possibility

still lives on

that we can be whatever, whenever, whoever

we want to be, or create, or write and dream

and so I continue, trying my best

to play the same future games as those before me

I'm know I'm not the only one

to spend my life

sitting playing future games

trying to create things that transcend time

and continue on

inspiring others for many generations

after.

On this day we remember los muertos

But who remembers the forgotten?

Did she have a pretty face?

Did he have a laugh like a lark?

Well, we'll never know

All that remains is the shine in the boy's eye

That he inherited from his grandmother

Fifty generations before

And the girl's big smile

That she inherited from a father

Far away in the forgotten muertos

All it takes is a single memory

And we live on eternally

La cara bonito

La risa de alondra

Motifs por los muertos

He tugs on my hand. Will we be friends forever? Of course we will.

Names plastered over your shirt. All the friends you’ve made throughout your time here. Each of the people you’ve spoken to most days of the year, over many many years. Each shaping you as you shape them in return. In each name there is a chunk of your identity, who you are. Some chunks are bigger than others - filling swathes of the white fabric, or dotted in multiple places.

They write in your book, a short sentence to remember them by - but in the same breath swearing never to forget. Because how could you summarise a person in a sentence in a notebook? Running through the fields together till you collapsed in the grass. Staying over at each other's houses so late - into the next day! Whispering illegal words in each others’ ears. Falling out and coming back together again.

But even so, as the years pass and you move homes, your identity is shaped by others. Playing video games isn’t cool. Being weak isn’t cool. Liking school is totally not cool. Only so many ideas can survive in one identity without destroying each other. Your old friends' words are pushed out, to the fringes. Still there, down deep. Strands of a happier and easier time. Sometimes you stumble across an old word or memory and something in you rejoices, but you can never go back, never fully excavate the pieces. So it stings almost more than if you had never found the relics.

And now it's time again. At the prom, the lights flashing, music blaring in your ears, making talking difficult. You aren’t supposed to speak to people. Just dance and drink and let go of everything here. There are no shirts, no quote books. Just brief exchanges with those you walk past, wishing them well. Recalling that joke from years ago. Another fragment of your identity. You both dig up matching memories, smiling, then cast it away. You will never speak of it again, never speak of each other again, most likely.

Outside the lights are cooler, the music quiet. You look over at your friend, collapsed on a chair. Two others stand vigil beside you, nodding knowingly. When you leave, your wish list is smaller now, revised. There are only a few people you hope to keep in your life now. It can’t be too much to ask.

But as you dig up the memories of your childhood, the sting is in your throat, and you look, nervously, to the future. What do you see? Are they still written on your shirt, or has the tumble dryer faded them all away?

Life is hard, everyone knows this.

But it is the passing of life that makes it so.

There is beauty

There is love

There is the moment when you look up at the stars with your arms wrapped round her waist

There is the moment when you crash across the finish line, your throat gasping, your mind triumphant

There is the moment when you hug them goodbye as they go off to a new place where you're not

These moments are life

And life is hard because it never stays still

Its a train that keeps on rolling over hills and mountains, passing sublime scenery but never letting you stop, not even for a moment - at any one moment in life

And that is the hard thing

If only life would hold its breath,

let us stay

here

in this moment

a little

bit

longer

.

We took a car over the hills towards some distant town cloaked in the unknowing mist that cloaks places and faces in the dreamscape.

Halfway up the hill and our car had broken down, dissolved to nothing. We were all alone on a moor, surrounded by little cute white flowers.

But then the flowers moved. They sprouted towering green tendrils. They chased me and my brothers, wrapping round us, flying through the air. I took out a knife, tried slashing at them. But there were too many, an endless supply of fear and death.

One grappled me round the waist, I swear I could feel its final embrace.

I woke up terrified, but to my surprise, I was still alive. And so are my brothers,

last time I checked.