(parenthetical): issue eleven january 2016

Y moving. Maybe there are things that don’t? Maybe it’s not doing the moving, maybe it’s being pulled, reeled into me like a fish.

I’m not sure what happens if it catches me. I used to have nightmares of falling into a pit of leeches.

Something like that I’m guessing.

I tried to explain this to mom. She just kept asking me why I was so sure.

But I’m not sure. I can’t be sure. So sometimes when I’ve been playing for too long with lego in the basement, or reading too long under the trampoline, I need to get up and go somewhere else, just in case.

Today Mom did something she’d never done before. She brought back a map and a big sheet of paper from work and spread it over the kitchen table.

Where did you see it last, she said.

When we were camping by the lake near grandma and grandpa’s, I said.

It’s summer time and I do a lot of exploring. I collect things. I was climbing a tree to get this huge pinecone when I thought I saw it across the lake.

How long would it take to get from the fridge to where I’m standing, mom said.

Half an hour, I said.

Mom wrote all this down on the paper. I stood on my tiptoes watching her write down numbers and cross out numbers. Eventually she circled one big number at the bottom.

I’ve calculated it out, she said. From the lake to us it will take a year and three months.

I looked at the paper but it was just a bunch of numbers.

Are you sure, I said.

I’ve used math, she said, and math is the surest thing in the world.

I’m not sure I saw it at the lake, I said.

Mom grabbed up the paper with the numbers and crunched it into the garbage. She was mad.

I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t know she was going to do all that work. She had her hands all tangled up in her hair.

The only sure thing is that it always moves towards me, I said.

She sat down at the table then and told me to sit down too.

I want you to imagine something for me, Hans, she said. Imagine it showing up right here in our kitchen, right there on the floor where the carpet becomes tiles. It’s so slow, you could leap right over it!

You could even tap dance around it if you wanted!

I’d be too scared, I said.

Then I’d help you scoop it up into a box and ship it to Africa, she said.

When it arrived there it would just start crawling back towards me, it wouldn’t even be angry, I said.