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67 Reckoning Where are you right now, emotionally? I’m back in the fourth grade, telling the teacher bathroom. I’m in the stall, on the toilet, my pants still zipped, wondering if my absence has become visible. Minutes crawl by like a tick up the school nurse’s thigh. There’s a world out there: a teacher with a black book, bullied siblings, a glum wife. And where are you? I’m here—carving a space out of emptiness, a closet out of thin air. Do you believe in god? I believe I’m being punished by something external for wrongs I’ve committed, and my punishment includes: 68 leaning down to pick up a quarter and banging my skull on a door handle; a hundredand -three degree fever, like a long, thin stop sign shooting up the thermometer’s spine; this coughing so hard, like receiving an unlicensed chiropractic adjustment from within, but I’m thankful for each fist of salt scrubbed into my wounds. I don’t want to get away with it anymore. Getting away with it is the worst punishment of all. ...

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