Summer-Sick as a dreaming boy

We used to bury apples in the garden hoping that the flesh and cores
would decompose before we would. We had an apple tree and it died in an
ice storm. We climbed about its limbs when it was broken. We hoped but
that's stupid. We were young but that's boring.
It was because of dreams and video games that I was a young boy once.
But that's pretentious. It was because of whatever we did that we were
brothers that dug up the garden. The garden was weeds then. The rhubarb
was growing, though. My mother made pies of them,

the strawberries when they were alive,

the rhubarb when it wasn't sour.

that's all dead now but we found raspberry vines. We don't bake pies
with those. We are forced to rival the birds and most times we don't
eat the berries. It is not a tragic thing. My brother lives on the west
coast but once he lived here. We aimlessed outside
before
before
before
and that was all the heat allowed.
He lived with us then, my brother by blood, assured, and before he got
his tattoos in the skin we were aimed at nothing but to strawberry and
rhubarb outside. He ate yogurt when it was humid and let a dollop slip
from the spoon onto the cat we called Kitty, adopted from the streets.
She had been a timid kitten but finally trusted our ugly human hands
and then the yogurt fell on her fur. She moved in a slight jump-jerk
and I laughed. It was humid.
We shrugged; let the cat fend for herself. He finished his
yogurt.

When I was little I dreamt of skeletons. I dreamt of drowning. When I
was older I drowned more often.
We thought about music; loved the Grateful Dead.

Nothing's for certain
it could always go wrong,
come in when it's raining
go on out when it's gone.
we could have us a high time,
living the good life
well, I know.

Sorry. Nevermind. I saw the cat later and she had licked the yogurt
spot off. The fur was adhesive now and dirt and grass attached to her.
We walked inside.
When I was little I dreamt of degradation. In the summers I stayed
awake till four in the morning and the sheets of the bed would
overwhelm when I slept. I wouldn't sleep.
but that's forgettable.
In the subconscious everything would degrade. I would drown and smoke
and lapse thru time. But that's insignificant.
It was in the grassy area behind our house when the sun was yellow
lagging-bright that my older sibling brought me across his shoulder and
ran up the hill and around and back down; my world was jostled and
jolted and he ended the rampage thru the yard by dropping me to the
grass, burnt dead and white. I ate a strawberry but it was not a
strawberry and the vines were gone.
The black locust tree still stands in a stack of pieces that will
never be used for anything. The cat's fur was adhesive and we wondered
how she enjoyed the yogurt.
It was heated the next day, as a car caught out in the sun creates a
convenient atmosphere in which to suffocate from temperature, and we
did not wonder about the cat any longer.
I burned my mouth on vegetable pizza and placed my back on the green
carpet. If you look up at the ceiling swirls there is one that
resembles a face. I pointed. It was hot outside and in.