There was nothing he couldn’t do. He balanced
a pencil on the tip of his nose, and the classroom
burst with applause. He ordered a drone strike
on the house of the teenager who’d ruled him
too short to ride the local rollercoaster. Now, now,
‍said his father as he backed out of the boy’s room.
The boy sharpened a screwdriver on a rock
and walked around the old town square with it
glinting in his fist. The world was all bulging tires
and soft throats. He could recite the alphabet
in four languages. He knew all the state capitals,
and he’d chosen what the new capitals would be
after the war was over. He stayed out past his curfew,
walking under the fuzzy glow of the subdivision
streetlights. The night unrolled itself for him
like a wet tongue. When he came to a house
he liked, he walked inside. I want to play
with your dog, he said to the people living there.
We don’t have a dog, they said, and he took out
his screwdriver. No one could do anything
about him. Why would they? Everyone loved him.
He’d made it illegal not to love him.