They say that I was born in February, in a hospital in Midtown, while it snowed. It is legend. There are photographs. They say the blue bathing suit with the little green frogs was my favorite. They say that those are my mother’s sunglasses, pointing at a naked boy wearing nothing else, in a Polaroid, laughing. My first birthday and the big stuffed dog? I remember that dog but I don’t remember getting that dog. It seems like I always had that dog. She would sleep in bed with me—endlessly vigilant, black plastic eyes flashing hallway light if anyone opened the bedroom door—along with a real cat named Good-For-Nothing Layabout Cat. That’s you, they say, pointing at a photograph—a little boy at his first rodeo, in a baby-blue cowboy outfit with suede fringe, standing awkwardly and squinting into the sun—but they aren’t pointing at a photograph, they are pointing at a story, how this and that and something something. What does it take to own the myth? Why build a self from this? It makes me uncomfortable, my story—part insight, part anecdote—started by unreliable people at cross-purposes. And which photographs didn’t get saved? And which photographs didn’t get taken? I never figured out who named the cat but everyone took credit for it.

All night, all the cities in the thickening darkness. All night, all the roads. All night, all the houses with their punched-in eyes in the sickening, sickening darkness. I slept on the roof. I slept in the yard. I slept in the closet, under the cuffs of a dozen shirts when I thought there was something in the room with me. There was nothing in the room with me. I slept. O pioneers, I kicked in doors. The sound of hooves. We must not tarry. Night has descended and all its stars, they crackle and burn while I am left here, silent in the dimmed arena. I swear to god, there must have been a day on the beach or a secret dip in the lake after dinner. I must have walked all night against the wind once, trying to get somewhere. There must have been. I slept on the plaid couch. I slept in the house with the red kitchen. I fell out of bed and slept on the floor in a square of astonishing moonlight. I crawled there, hand over hand, from the darkness of a terrible dream. Believe me, something is heaving, incomprehensible. The house is filling up with strangers and the picture frames fall off the walls. There isn’t a word for it. Metal, powder, rust, a pear; even here a night flight, a tense change, struck like a bell. What’s that in your drink? Have you been here long? O why won’t you love me, love me? There isn’t a word for it, moonlight, slippery. There isn’t a word for it, moonlight. Through every window at once. I concentrated on the moon. I dug a hole in the sky and called it the moon. A hole in the sky and we call it the moon.

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I don’t think my mother wanted to be a cult leader. I’m not sure they wanted her either, but the guru was ready to retire and my mother had charisma and a living room large enough to accommodate everyone. Her boyfriend at the time was a walk-in: a man so previously sad that his original self had left its body and something else had grabbed the wheel. This new thing was driving the car and sleeping with my mom. I have been sad but never have I actually left my body. My mother has been sadder, but it never made her a poet. I practice my sentences. Sadness is overrated. She did her cult-leading by the book until she finally had her epiphany while cleaning the bathroom: You are where you are. Deal with it. She had her followers practice doing the things they were afraid of, the things they hated, and the things that bored them, in an attempt to overcome their reluctance and their vanity. The goal was acceptance, eventually bliss. They were sad but hopeful. The cult was a place for them, the way church is a place for sinners. For legal reasons she was only a cult leader on the weekends. Tuesday and Thursday nights she held group therapy in the living room while I did my homework in the kitchen. Weekdays she saw clients in her office, which was my bedroom. Damaged people would sit on the couch and unload their emotional problems all over themselves. At night, I would unfold the couch and sleep in it. Some nights I climbed out the window. She didn’t notice. She kept a note taped to the refrigerator door—Surrender your attachments. It seemed like a mandate that self-erased: Keep on struggling to stop your struggling. I don’t think it meant what she thought it meant. I didn’t like the implications.