I read this book when I was little, a childrens book. One of those books with chapters and all but still the occassional picture. Still no real depth jsut a sotry and one that you could understand at your grade level. In this book the young boy who was the protagonist was turned into a mouse. The young boys grandmother was of coruse very upset by this. The boy became very cotnempaltive about it. He kne whis life was shroter, he coudl feel it. His heart beat something like a thousand beats a minute, i dont remember the exact figure now. The book had it, it was extraordinary.

I always felt a strang econnection with him and was upset when he became a boy again. That is, if he became a boy again, I cannot really recall

that is all I could think of while in the ruins of a house. the dirt spreading over me, my feet with a visible line where the dirt could nto get to them because of my sandles and this strange gritty feeling beneath my feat. the black charred matter on my hand from touching the walls, or rather, the remaining beams of the burn tout house. The one in which I was loathe to stay in years before becaue of a strange feeling it gave me. Or was that one of my friends who refused to stay near it, i cannot recall.

the stange inability to recall things that would make my life seem mor elike a novel is such an aggravation. I could mention the book I read at the beginning of the story and tie it back in whent alking about this very day. I could make a casual reference to the foreboding surrounding the charred home and the reader could call it foreshadowing and it would be called brilliance by english teachers across the country.

but alas I can never recall things. For I dont know hwich memories are real and which ones I have altered and made to make my life more poetic.

that heart beat against my ear, so close to me, so much higher than I expected it to be. and the way when your arms wrapped around me I had to move my head to escape it from being lost in your armpit. the sudden akwardness of reality of physcial cotnact. And the heart beat, tapping, beating wildly against my ear.

and i suddenly feel as though you might break me, as i am held tigheter and tighter. considering the large and sturdy girl I am that seems unlikely but i feel that fear. That strange unatural fear that i may be stepped on, lik ea mouse.

and for the first time i feel nervous, snese I saw you. Snese i first spoek to you and touched you,f ro the first itme i feel nervous. /Because here, in front of me, or beside me, depending on the exact moment. Here, is something, someone so much more intense, who is feelign so much more so much more deeply than I am. It scares me. no no use the right tense. I tscared me. and i beame very fragile, because I had never been before. never so easily broken.

and I couldnt look up. I couldnt, for so many reasons. If i looked in those eyes i would be even more confronted with that intensity, becuase it would create such a theatrically perfect moment for a kiss that i wouldnt know what to do.

because I have never had any moment that was theatrically perfect, and as much as I have always wanted to have one i didnt take it.

beause that isnt what I want.