How Whales Communicate

When I was seven I knew a man who collected paper cuts. He traveled from library to library adding to his collection. The collection he hid on his spine and under his socks. When I was eight he showed me his spine. riddled with cuts. A spine painted in fiction, horror, living and children's books. When I was nine he would lay on his stomach and let me read his spine with eager fingers. That's where I learned what a kiss was. What it is to lie to your parents. How to grow flowers in a tub. By the age of twelve I had started my own collection of paper cuts. "How Whales communicate" was the first cut to sink itself behind my knees. When I turned fifteen he let me peak beneath his socks. He wouldn't let me read. Just look. He promised by my eighteenth birthday I could read the cuts between his toes. By the time I was seventeen he had moved on. He hadn't died, in fact i'm not sure if he was ever born. He simply moved on. Leaving me. a young man. a young man with knees full of paper cuts and fingers that craved a spine.