(Copyright 2004, Metin Bereketli Associates)

What will be left of you when you’re not your parents’ idea of a good boy?

The trouble is, they were not their own parents’ idea of a good girl and good boy either.

But I’m not trying to be difficult here. I’m just trying to be polite.

It’s July. The asphalt is melting. The city is a story that has just begun.

What will be left of you when the conversation about you in a small room in a faraway country goes something like this:

“Oh, him? Yes, that’s right. We used to know him, don’t we?"

"We don’t know what happened to him, really. He kind a disappeared. Just like that."

"Never heard from him since."

"He had an accident, the last I've heard. I think."

"And he married, then divorced. But that’s about it.”

When the people you used to know once upon a time cannot remember your eyes, will you cease to exist? Who will believe your old photographs?

What will become of you when you lose your business cards, rolodex and shoe size - and acquire new ones?

Who are you, really?

If she comes to you without first clearing her throat,

or an appointment on the phone,

but showing up just like that
one bright morning
at your door,

to squeeze into your palm
the end of a humming rope
attached to a Chinese kite
swaying its dragon head
in the high desert winds,

swallows diving from the billowing clouds
at ninety miles an hour,

What will you think of the day?

What will you do with yourself?

Will you be ready for a big serving

of chocolate-chip ice-cream?

Listen.

A hungry baby is crying and cutting through the mess of
the Sunset Boulevard.

They are frying onions in the kitchen of the TexMex restaurant on the corner.

The blown-out section of the red neon marquee over the entrance of the grunge disco is buzzing in protest, like an angry cicada.

The juice that used to run through it freely is still trying to close the circuit and make the connection.

How can you generalize?

You belong here.

As you are.

Minus, the idea of you.

Falling is the shortest way to oxygen.