On a train to NYC

watching the world blur beyond the window

I can’t help but wonder

how I arrived here.

It seems like just yesterday

I was a nondescript fat kid

fodder for bullies

ignored as irrelevant by siblings

watching my parents’ marriage disintegrate

enduring my father’s wrath and expectations.

A helpless witness to my mother’s devolution

into depths of madness so deep

she’d eventually forget her entire life

and even the name she gave me.

I was just that fat kid a minute ago

in an unremarkable bungalow that baked like an oven

in lazy grade school summers.

My humble attic bedroom was an inferno

where my mind burned with big...

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