hit return hit home hit shift hit control hit end hit escape hit delete

The further I move into the future, the farther I am from the moments felt fleeting, deepsicks! perfect for the telling, give the tubes something to talk about, number ones and zeros something to digest. The further I move closer to the past, the more terror and timing serrate my heart. That wasn’t part of my plan, however tightly I abide. Move to the city. Make some money. Check.

Serrate is an interesting verb, see. It doesn’t mean cut, it means to make cutting, jag that shit up, give it teeth and a taste for the vicious. Viscous. It’s easy to mix those words up, too, easy not to notice. Easy to get away with, though either way, you pay.

I’m told my accent is an awesome Frankenstein of Fargo and West Coast Canada. I don’t notice. I don’t mind. In Vancouver I was exotic. Now I’m incomprehensible. Not the words that come out my mouth, just that I’m here, at all.

Minneapolis is old and new in ways I am too, and I’ve been seeking and exploring parts unfamiliar. Pubs and approaches, bike routes and catalpas.

My windows face the back sides of other buildings, oil stains and pressure-washed graffiti apparitions. I’m close to Eat Street and its dozen Asian grocers, so I feel at home, whatever the hell that means. Food is crazy cheap, internet breaks the bank and more people ride bike than I remember.

Fargo had some thunderstorms, new strip malls, mortgage crisis say what? they can’t build houses fast enough. I saw where the flood went. The lush lowlands were outta control green, skinny trees all fuck yeah we stood here the whole time and I know it’s no lie, but it’s hard to believe. They put a dorm downtown. The new library gleams.

A bright, bad day, I went to where the Pits were.

Thought the things I felt, felt the things I threw awayfinding overgrown trails trees forgotten youth totems, concrete mountains,

rebar debris

and the dirty little river,

lumps in ghost throats, brain fevers and shivers, my school of the hardest knock on these woods. Hit escape, hit delete.

Cross yourself and spin and spit and curse then leave yeah right I broke the seal op’t the box swallowed the key.

I still ride the back of the devil that dreams me.