I no longer remember what it is like to bask shirtless with a garden against my skin, or for<br />someone to take a picture of my naked torso that they will actually develop at Walgreens.<br />Around then I realized that, in this world, there would be many instances when my body would not feel like my body.<br />Nakedness was swimming in the bay as the sunlight dimmed behind the apple trees,<br />and when we walked down the street and men smiled at us, they didn’t mean it like that.<br />I liked the way the dirt felt, all freshly dug, against my skin, and I asked my mother to bury me in it the way she sometimes did at the beach.<br />It is like a game to him, like one of those colorful woven tubes that trap your fingers when you exert opposing forces.
