I used to throw rocks through the windows of abandoned buildings on the other side of the highway. I don’t remember being angry when I threw them. But I do remember thinking I was tearing down this huge, dead, and abandoned thing left to collect mud and dust so sure I was nobody would miss me.

Other kids were playing sports or cards or building model cars with their friends, but there you were, helping yourself to shatter over and over like a house building itself beneath a funnel cloud. Your self-destructive temperament was hard.

But you lived despite yourself, and eventually you started to fall without your reasons that were holding you up. Total self-annihilation was the goal from the beginning. You weren’t happy until you were putting holes in everything abandoned. I wasn’t here until I was slowly making myself disappear, word after word.