What holds grief? What furrow deep inside, what red canal, hoards the debris, the leavings, the cut-away parts of my original form? Is there enough left? Can my true form be recovered?Once upon a time I was a boy, not especially happy, destined for ordinary incompleteness, and the daubed, crudely-molded, and spruced character with which we makeshift, once conflagrations are doused and youth's megrims give way. 

Three boys took my cocked hat, my hope for a natural death, my healthy color in good company. They corrupted me. They made me think they knew me, better than anyone, before or since.  They removed the boy I was and crawled in, to fester in the raw empty, and became ghouls in my oily corners, squatting on crumbled concrete. Thieves. Monsters.