More To Come (a brief history, glossed over)

when the truck ran him down he was holding his mother's hand. one minute he felt her warmth and the next minute he was flying in the air. he saw upside down mailboxes and surprised faces. he remembered the kitchen table and the colour of sunlight. he remembered his teacher's faces but not their names. there were glass bottles you could find in back lanes and trade for ice cream flavoured jaw breakers. white caps on the lake before the developers came. once he woke up on the back step in the middle of the night with the door locked and his pyjamas on. our kite got caught on the lightning rod of the water tower. it was made to look like a bat. if you swam out to the buoys there were barrels at the bottom wrapped in barbed wire and the fish flies made your brain crazy. they had to take us back to town. hiding on the floor mats in the dark flat night. pretended we were sleeping but they saw our eyes moving under our closed lids. watched the eleven o'clock news through the curtain. when I was small, AIDS hadn't come. I think we were still mildly frightened of the Russians when I was small. when I was small, we made pathways through the carragana and gorged ourselves on Saskatoons. it was before the internet.