The Body

y wife, my children, my friends - they all think that having an imagination like mine must be quite nice: not only do I make a lot of money from it, but I can also see films in my mind when I want to. But sometimes my imagination turns out to have long, sharp, cruel teeth. You see things you would prefer not to see, things that keep you awake all night.

Darkness in the Forest
We went another mile and then decided to camp for the night. There was still some daylight left, but nobody really wanted to use it. We were exhausted from what had happened at the dump and on the bridge, but it was more than that. We were in Harlow now, in the forest. Somewhere was a dead child, who probably had a broken body and was covered with flies. Nobody wanted to get too close to him with night approaching. By stopping here, we thought there had to be at least ten miles between us and him, and of course all four of us knew there were no such things as ghosts, but ten miles seemed about far enough if we were wrong.
Vern, Chris and Teddy gathered wood and started a campfire. Chris laid it on stones and made a clear space around it because the forest was very dry and he didn't want to take any risks. While they were doing that, I sharpened some green sticks and pushed lumps of hamburger meat on to them. When the flames were low and the fire was good and hot, we cooked the meat, but we were too hungry to wait. We pulled the lumps off their sticks early. They were black on the outside, red on the inside and completely delicious.
Afterwards Chris opened his backpack. He took out a packet of cigarettes and gave us one each. We lay back on the ground or against trees and smoked our cigarettes, as if we were grown men. We were feeling good.
'There's nothing like a smoke after a meal,' Teddy said.
'Absolutely,' Vern agreed.
We laid our blankets out on the ground

Talking destroys the effects of love. Love isn't soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close. No word can close those love-bites. In fact, if the wounds dry up, the words will stop too.

And at times we all feel closer to the children we once were than to the boring, sensible adults we have become.

I caught a wounded bird once and it died of fear in my hands. Perhaps Ray Brower had died because he was simply too frightened to go on living.

Perhaps Ray Brower had died because he was simply too frightened to go on living.

And the big things in life should never be easy; they should be marked in some way as important.

But the most important things are the hardest to say. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in life.

Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.

And the big things in life should never be easy; they should be marked in some way as important.