113. A bedtime story } housed.

Before bed my youngest asked me if I would tell her a story from when I was a boy. I said, “Indeed:

“Along the streets in my neighborhood were trees covered by a purple bark.”

My eldest asked how old was I. “Five,” I said.

“A long ago the streets were lined with trees that grew a purple bark. Those trees made me dizzy. I dared myself to touch a trunk with my tongue and I did. My nose so close to the purple—it smelled of hot asphalt. The streets in my neighborhood as yet unpaved. Lickety-split the tree-sap stuck to my tongue. I dropped and uttered the following poem:

Et wildflower root

to right a bad

phrase-chain ingestion.

Vomited dandy

patent leather.

“My sister carried a real lion on her bicycle handlebars that she roared to get my parents’ attention.”

My eldest assured my youngest that none of this was true but my youngest wasn’t so sure and neither, I could tell, was my eldest. “Obviously,” I said, “it’s all true.”