August 18, 2016/October 16, 2016 Not every ten year old wore a collared shirt with jeans but some did and so it wasn’t strange buttoned to the top with a belt pulled up high over underpants white the kind with a vent for you know going to the bathroom and socks pulled up to mid calf in running shoes they called sneakers in America but he never sneaked except the occasional peek in the locker room where he hid so well he couldn’t see himself down there except that his thighs looked too wide when he sat on the edge of the pool embarrassed watching the girls in their Speedo breasts years later he was sometimes naked on special occasions like with a girl starting to see that his body was not so disgusting after all beginning to wish that he’d seen it sooner and all the others too naked girls and boys together imagining how it might have been to be one of them but you can’t return to your village to see what you never saw or be how you never were and the more you think of it the more you can’t be here
Martin Ahrens 