the truth

Once upon a time there was a boy, and if me might borrow from a lovely lady we will call him boy little boy, just this once will we borrow, and only in homage, such tiny homage, and this is a little boy who has already spent a lifetime looking for those who brought him into the world and then quickly cast him off, looking for those who abandoned him, for those whose image he assumes he was created in, and so he has looked and looked and looked, everywhere his little boy brain and little boy feet might arrange for him to look until he has decided he can look no longer. And as a comedian once said, Been around the world twice, talked to everybody once. So the boy finally came to accept that he was alone in the world. And that was that.

But that is never that, two is never one, so after a short respite the boy set back out, now looking all the world over for things he might fancy. And he did fancy, and fancy, and so he collected much like we might expect, his greedy little fingers reaching and touching and holding every shiny thing, every smooth or warm or sharp surface, unwilling to release his hold, stuffing it into his pockets, dragging it to his domicile, or if the thing too large, standing nearby and watching it for days or weeks or months, the little boy unwilling to consider life detached from his new fancy. By way of example, as we do not wish to be too summary, the little boy once trailed a little girl for just over six months, following her every move, watching and waiting and yearning, of course yearning, and as there were no stalker laws then, and as he was just a harmless little boy and one who knew to keep a respectable distance, no one took offense to the little boy's following and yearning, but, as you might imagine, the little girl did grow tired of the intense scrutiny and so, from time to time, she would hide so deeply the little boy could not follow her, but still he would yearn, more intently then, his eyes kept closed so he might imagine he was following her still, and then soon the imaginary following would become imaginary leading, the little girl now smiling and laughing as she followed the little boy's leading, this reversal decidedly more pleasant, the yearning now more intense.

But this fairy tale does not end happily ever after as, may we call her the girl little girl just once, the girl little girl weakened under the intense followings of the little boy, so much so that she felt a sickness in her belly that caused her to see doctors, a sickness that troubled her so much she could not discuss it with anyone, not even her mother and father, especially them, and so the little girl while hiding from the little boy sat down and wrote him a note, today if written from a professional we might call it a cease and desist order, a little girl's note to a little boy saying, I don't want to play with you anymore, and please stop following me around, and please stop longing for me. And go away. And so the little boy did what we might expect a little boy to do, he cried like a little boy, or a little girl, maybe that, but either way he shed a lot of tears, and then he followed the little girl around some more in the hope that her mind would change, maybe if he just waited for her tummy to feel better then she would welcome him following her around, like in his imaginings where she would follow him, like that, so he continued until his tummy got sore, very sore, and the sickness took him to doctors too, like the girl, and this thought pleased him, the two of them now lovers like from a fairy tale, both struck and wounded by the same magic dart or arrow, but the doctors told him his sick was nothing like her sick and he would do well to move far away to a better climate, a dry hot climate, and there he could resume his following and his yearning and he would be much less likely to catch the cold, the sick, that he now felt, the sick that the last doctor he saw promised would leave his body when he left this place of the little girl. And so the little boy, after following the little girl one more day for his memory, so he could be certain to not miss a single step and he would always have this one perfect day of following and yearning, forever and ever, traded all of his collected things, his shiny things, for passage south and a life of fresh following and yearning, without the sick and without the cold, especially without the cold. The sick he would keep, some of the sick always with him, and because he learned well from following the girl, the rest he would keep hidden away, always safe,