You feel like the explosion is still exploding, which of course the theory says it is. But what you think you mean, is that you feel closer to the blast's center than others. Often, you are overcome with the urge to cover your ears and [[run screaming]]

Technically you got here when a sperm from Wally perpetrated a home invasion on an egg of [[Jean]]

Now here you are living life for yourself, and although most of the guilt has been worked out of you or talked out of you or repurposed as ambition, you still walk sometimes at night [[tethered to an ache]] that you can't name.

You have no [[words]]

They didn't even notice you were gone until several months later when someone else was looking for the [[bear suit]]

Books, you imagination, games, Netflix, other people's problems, causes, lost and found bins, bouncing a pink rubber ball, bathtubs, work, [[in-between the lines]]

How you got here

These hiding spots are all a step up from, or at least a side step away from, the old hiding spots; the bottom of a glass of tequila, the end of a fist, a padded room, sometimes in a hotel and [[sometimes not]]

From then to now, who can say what was being thrown into the blender or what buttons got pushed and [[why]]

You hold his scarred hands, the battle weary hands of a cook with your soft, [[writing hands]]

You are good in crisis. You are crisis camels. Some hidden hump stores what you need [[when crisis comes]]

You saw Wally and Jean recently in the midst of a crisis. Duffy, their son and your brother ended up in emergency surgery in Calgary. They called and you came. The the three of you took turns watching over his hospital bed, one winged angels, previously wounded in separate hunting accidents, each of you remembering to pass the nursing station [[wing side in]]

Wally and Jean look old to you now, and as you splash water on your face to stay awake, you feel old too. You take the night shifts because you are the youngest [[of the old]]

And so you sing him a lullaby that was sung to you when you were a baby, born in Calgary, on an unseasonably snowy day in October.

Cells did what they do to make a baby of you, born in Calgary on an unseasonably snowy day in [[October]]

Time was just standing still apparently and then it exploded and [[here we are]]

Why is not a spiritual question someone told you once. You have your suspicions that how isn't either. I mean look what happened when Stephen Hawking chased [[that one]]

You aren't close anymore. You left Calgary 25 years ago. You left crisis central, vamoosed from crazy town, hitch hiked to Vancouver dressed as a polar bear, lying about being an Olympic Mascot who knew it was time to [[get out of town]]

You don't really know what it's all about, but here you are living life as the offspring of [[Wally and Jean]]

And that lie cracks the hospital floor open and even though you look like you're sitting there all night long, holding your brother's hand, you are actually falling closer and closer to the [[centre of the blast]]

It's too loud, it's too fast and there's nowhere to hide. Still you try. [[Favorite Hiding Spots]]

Chicken Army

In the hospital room you watch your brother fight for his life. It's not the first time you have watched him [[do this]] \n

When their son, your brother comes to and sees you, he laughs through the pain and the drugs and sounds like a toy running out of battery power. You kiss his sweaty head and he keeps laughing. You hear the Jean Angel say to the nurses, “They're very close, [[very close]].”