haibun [When I was a child,] When I was a child, nothing really happened to me. I had two parents who gave me plenty. More than I could handle. I was not assaulted, but assault tugged at the hem of my dresses and followed me into the bath. I did break a few bones, yet I got to keep the pieces. Nothing happened to me. In the early hours of the day, when the world sleeps off her hangover, when he ticks along in distant rooms before the sun, I sat –– I sit –– upon the lap of nothing. Sometimes I sat alone in a hotel room making something out of nothing. Or I stood in the kitchen to take it all in. I befriended nothing as a child finds a kitten. Nothing nursed upon me 'til it bellowed like a lion. I never weaned it. Even when it grew too great, I knew to let my mother sleep. She needed something to care about – she didn't care for nothing. She slept to avoid it. She slept right on through it. We broke bread with nothing, we broke the silence after with nothing. Nothing happened to me, and when my parents stepped backward into nothing, I flew away to a land that teemed with something even worse. //