flattened underfoot is not returning. My sister, even after lying flat on the bed, even after many trips to the doctor, does not return to me. She simply moves on. Letters from school, letters from out of school, oh yes, she has left, something wrong with her, and it is not even her arm, it is with her head, all scrambled inside, like a dented pillow, even though it is by all credible appearances normal, and I think that I should have slammed her head in the door, maybe that would have prevented this. Once, like a fool, I propped my feet on the handlebars of my bicycle, hands behind my head, and cruised. Then the moving van came at me, my feet dropped to the ground, and in the moment poised between standing and falling, I looked down at my left foot. The truck's sagging tire shaved the edge of my shoe, an inch from crushing the toes. Then it barreled on, I was on my back, looking up at sky and brick buildings,
 | | and it was plain to see -- I had used up my life. Everything from here on in was merely a favor.
My friends have commented on the state of my office, and usually their observation ends with opinion: This is intense. You should rearrange things. This can't be good for you. Not a square inch of wall is bare -- everywhere there are photos, laudatory notices, angry letters. I sit for hours as they gang up on me, and every so often a particular item sends me scrambling into myself. A book review written by a professor who never writes book reviews, but he cannot refrain from revealing how I have used doctored photos, how my facts cannot be correct, because if three hundred thousand people died, how did the population of this city increase by fifty thousand during this time period, and what about that map that was seemingly copied whole cloth from another source, a disreputable
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