I met with Shanon,
she was a maybe,
a friend's dog for sale.
Then mom and dad said no.
A boy needs a dog
- sometimes. This one did.
(In his final years,
an old photo revealed
that dad, as a boy
had a dog, named Waldman.

I stepped on a bug
and mom and dad fought,
at the Rimon Inn.
It was traumatic.
They took mom away.
Summer in Tzefat.
My Bar Mitzvah treat.

March twenty-eighthril
Mom's mnemonic way
to learn bro's birthday
and February
twenty sixthril was
her way to know hers.

Once, as a child 
I was a victim,
victim of victims.
was hard to avoid,
But now they're all gone
except in my head.
(Where I choose to think
my victim-ey thoughts
sitting home, alone.)

I recently wrote
of the distant train
I hear in my home.
how it comforts me
with its whistle/horn
but now it won't stop
hauntingly constant
(Dream turned to a curse
like an episode
of the Twilight Zone.)

"He is not afraid
and you are afraid."
the graphologist
said to me back when
I was twenty two
and brought dad to him
in an envelope
(It was Israel,
a one way ticket,
when I tried to fly.)

I drop the container.
Cashews dance all around.
Then I get frustrated,
worry what's wrong with me,
and then I remember
every time in my life
that involved a spilling:
a strawberry soup
features prominently.
Then I gather it all,
put it together, here.