I am sitting in a room on a decrepit steel barge. My teeth ache. It is cold, bitter cold outside, but it is warm and silent inside. There are books on the walls here, ignorant books, with titles like "Hot Paint" and authors like Dick Couch and Jo Jo Mayfield and some woman who insists on beiong call Lafondah Kyii.

I am casting out into a world I once knew, that I can no longer be a part of. I am reaching for my friends, but they will soon be out of my grasp.

I am scared. The woman I love, she is scared.

I am going to be a father, and while I am happy, it sometimes hurts worse than bullets, the searing pain of eastern woods and fires made of snow.