The boy grows up hanging out at the gallows because that is where wayward, second-best sons are sent after school to play. Playgrounds like minefields. He knows he is first-worst and likes it that way. His first kiss is with death, just a peck, and tastes of hot sauce. Pecking order goes: dust, sunburn on crooked nose, afternoon naps at the badlands. Have you no fear, spits his nosy father. No, but the boy is determined to find it. He mines through a layer of goosebumps. The road to fear is bumpy and longing and like a dehydrated heartbeat. Long ago the boy remembers his father raising a poker of a child, how a surface goes rippling, how ash crumples, how a caged raven howls, how he actually doesn’t remember any of it, not one bit. The boy’s face often acts out a red painting. The act of soul searching leaves many skeletons in the dumpster behind 7-Eleven. He levies a die but it’s an unlucky prime number. The number of bones in his body keeps changing and his chiropractor recommends therapy. His father mends questions with fists. Have you known fear, the boy asks his body. The answer shudders. His birth was so cold. He learned to still his spine. He wouldn’t remember fear if it hugged him.