I understood it. Never broke a window. You know why not? Cuz my father, he was a smart guy. I come home from school late. My mom tells me she’ll tell my father. And my father wasn’t a guy to mess with. He wasn’t a Nobel prize winner or nothing, my father, but he knew what day was garbage day in Kingsbridge. He’d grab me by my little wiseass arm so I could feel my pulse speedin up, and made sure I never came home late again. Then he’d interrogate me, say he knew something. He’d tell me all sorts of things. Told me my brother Angel saw me smoking cigarettes by the kiosk on the Concourse. I didn’t do nothin, I’d tell him. But see, you couldn’t trick the old man, not my old man.

You’re talking, Jimmy. Jesus.

Anyways, like I was sayin: law and property. Two things I always knew as a kid. But yous. No, Jimmy. You guys, I don’t know.

I dab each tiny bleeding hole with a green gel that clots blood, given to me by my brother in law, the barber.

When we wrote on things we had a reason to. For stickball you need an X. So we’d paint an X. Nothin like today.

I guess what I’m askin you today is: Why? Why do you walk around like you got nothin to lose and nothin to gain, with no respect for anybody or anythin? These walls weren’t put here magically. Men worked with their hands to make them. Guys like my father helped build the Bronx. Yous can’t just decide to take all that away, everything those people worked to bring together. Here’s Lieutenant Dacy to talk some more with yous – you guys.

Besides having a fat wife, a whiny kid, and a sloppy attitude about life, he’s a moron. No, I won’t include that in my speech at IS 86.

I push the toothbrush into my teeth rubbing it up and down on my front teeth and tongue, something I also do for our dog, the fucking breath that thing has. Caramba!

In the sides of my eyes lines grow like the red I now notice on my eyeballs. Turn into a fuckin tree branch one of these days.

Christ. Intermediate School 86, 1964. Built by the same assholes who built the projects: concrete legos, the inside green like a hospital so the blood don’t show.

I forget I brushed my teeth and finish the cold cup of coffee left on the sink.

I’d like for someone right now to tell me I look good. I feel like one of them old pipes rusted on the inside, about to burst any day and take up half the street, the rivers of filth that course through me every day.

I close my eyes and leave my image alone on the mirror. I see the Bronx River crowded with arcs and roadways. Although I can remember when some of those bridges were built, I can’t help but feel that’s the closest I’ll ever get to ancient.