Everything was in order, on my birthday, the blades of grass soared into the sky above me just as they should, and nobody noticed me on my birthday because I was a commodity.
I was too small to march to a picnic blanket and carry off crumbs. I was too weak to shovel grains of sand. I was too young and too curious to sleep though my mother insisted. I should stay put and grow.
It was summer, and the mothers were all having children then stomping off to work the watermelon picnics of the giants. We were all, my brothers, sisters, birth-mates and I, expected to slumber until the nectar of juice boxes and chunks of bread crust were delivered to us for breakfast.
Mother had to work. She could not supervise. She was supervised. I noticed the sun ducking behind clouds in alternating warmth like a seductress. The sun trumped my mother¹s milky mandate to wait. I swung my feet out of bed and did deep knee bends in multiples of six.
I was fresh, new, limber, and not one of the joints in my segmented anatomy crackled. I could scurry to the sun.
I scurried to the sun.
Under the sun everything was enormous, but I understood where I was. My perspective was changed, but the scenery was familiar.
I saw with wet eyes the concrete steps and scaled the porch with sticky feet.
Slipped through the threshold under the door.
Slipped through the threshold under another door.
Up more stairs to a bookcase.
One human gulp of flat champagne slept in the bottom of a black coffee mug atop the bookcase.
I shimmied into the mug and sipped all I could, and feeling confidently tipsy, fell out of the mug and down the glass panes of the bookcase to the keyhole.
Slipped in without a key and with the ambition of one who is confidently tipsy, reasoned:
"I should read all these books."
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