While going through a box of my old shit in my grandma's basement, looking for something to smile about, I find nothing but blue ribbons everybody won, report cards with straight Fs, and school photos of a child with pain bursting through the seams of a broken smile. Nothing of any value whatsoever, except maybe this this old picture of the night sky I painted when I was too young to know that the world is full of things far scarier than the monsters under my bed, things so scary they'd make you wish those monsters were real so they could reach up from the shadows and grab you, ending it all.

watercolor stars...
when I could lay down the weight
of the universe