Farewell to Childhood

(17-23 May 1993) after George Gordon Byron

The towns where we lived seemed foreign, blocks of overgrown yards and dark porches, and behind the walls, in the dark, were old people too frightening to have ever been children. As my father drove us home in the evening, mine was a feeling of loneliness, time on my hands, staring at the headlights of oncoming cars. Something must have happened I was embarrassed about. I could share my thoughts with no one. I would write such things down only years after. Eternity was the sameness of a day and I might not have noticed its details. It’s only a recurring dream, being lost in the necessity of waking.