Aporia

A cave is a tear in the world no god blows through like a wind.The older boys said to me, You're it, turning, smiling together.A cave is a cathedral of one wet ceiling and the absence of breeze.

If I could have exited, I kept loving their attentions instead.Let myself be led past it. They called me their tear-in-the-world.Then the game was over. We left it for the cave water to clean up.

A boy's second language is shadow-language. We walked backinto the light. After a long period of drought, the earth, knowing it will rainreleases from the wind-parched stones an oil: petrichor.

Petra, meaning "stone," and ichor, which is the blood of the gods.Inside the cave was a house. When it rained, the basement flooded.The door was locked from the inside. The boys knew

I was too young for the game, that was the point. What is a boyis a cave-sized question. To tear the ears out will not stopthe memory of the sound, you know. The way I learned a boy worksis by force. When the game's been beaten, it ends. The gods bleed.