I’m in the bucks of stars. I should do something productive. I will write instead. It’s been a while since I wrote long form.

Fifty variations on the same theme: Mystery, Drama, Build-Up, Mystery Solved, Climax, Resolution.

I’ve lost it. It’s gone. I don’t know where it ran away to, and if you see it, I would appreciate if you returned it. I’m not expecting it to be found, especially by somebody else. But I’m always hopeful. You see I used to be a superhero. Not anyone you would know, probably. I would pull on my tights and fly to save the city every evening. I spent the days in school, or I would have been searching for evil doers then too. It’s not that I was lazy or anything. Okay, maybe I was a little lazy. I have a curfew, and with school, friends, and homework, I didn’t get to do much crime fighting. The summers were no different. My parents sent me to sleep away camp. And although it may go against popular opinion, there is not much crime in the woods. At least no crime that I could fight in my tights. They haven’t passed laws against incredibly incompetent counselors or . . . .

So it goes. I can’t hear anything. He can’t hear. He has gray hair coming out of his ears. Both ears are covered in aids. He has little hair left, the small amount of gray hair is unkempt and twisting around his head, giving a look as if it was ready to grow out and wrap itself around his head.

His blue shirt is covered with white flower designs. He wears khaki pants and a brown belt. He has liver spots across his arms and bandages covering up the worst of them.

His daughter is with him. She wears a blue one piece dress. It falls flat on her to below her knees. She wears black pants underneath. The shirt has four golden buttons near the top, making it look like a sailor top. She has straight brown hair with golden highlights. She’s older. I first mistook her for his younger wife. She looked at him and spoke loudly. It was hard for him to hear her. She called him dad, which gave away their relationship.

He’s drinking coffee. She already finished hers. She cleaned up the plates they had their pastries on.

He wears large glasses with golden frames. He greets people by raising his cup of coffee. He is missing the third joint in his middle left hand. His fingernails are long but not overly so. They could use a cut.

I’m round wear I should be flat, and flat where I should be round. I know this. I know that I can’t hear anything even with my ears covered in aids. I don’t trim the gray hair coming from my ears. My wife is convinced they help my hearing. Something about vibrating with the sound and directing more noise into my eardrum. It hasn’t drummed in a long time. I don’t miss it. Most noises are just that: noises.