When I was three, I wanted the colorful, fun-shaped
cereal with the kids’ commercial, but my mom said,
you won’t like that, and I said, I will, so she said, fine,
and she got it, but I didn’t like it.

And when I was three, I skipped down a path after soccer
practice saying I was glad my shirt had the
number three on it, but come to think of it,
I think my brother had said it first.

When I was three, I sat in a three-tier closet,
and I don’t know, man, that’s about it. I just sat there.
I smiled and I said I liked it. It was my brother’s.
It was the best, but it was also our favorite.

When I was three, gosh, there are actually a lot of these. There
was a dirt pile, and I sat in a wagon, and I got in trouble for visiting
a neighbor’s dog, and, actually, I mean, anyways, there was, but
what I meant to say was, when I was three, I wished video game

characters a happy birthday. When I was four, a teacher told me
that I’d been abandoned, and that it was my job to fix it, but no
one explained how, and I tried, but it didn’t work, and it’s,
um, it’s not my earliest childhood memory but it’s the biggest.

first published in Burnings Magazine