Dear Alien,

His father was a redneck truck drive from Yorktown, Indiana who spent his later years sucking back Stroh's beer at the Dickey Mouse Tavern on Highway 32. He'd smoked Camel straights. And his steaks were eaten raw. But hamburgers were done well or not at all. Sent back. Back to a kitchen with Mama that sometimes had milk.

The house he remembered best... or most anyway... was dandelion-gone-to-seed yellow and damn big. Too big for his thinking now but not big enough for the child he'd meant to be. His side of town was what could have been called 'poor'. But only if followed by 'white trash'.

He went back and saw where the house used to be once. Found it gone. Replaced by years of thoughts of fleas on dogs and backyard pussy-willows gone soft and rich. The property bought out years ago by his old neighbors the Zebells for the expressed purpose of tearing down the melancholy structure to make way for their cotton-candy, candy-apple wagons used only in the warmer months for state fairs and pocket-lining. He had only rented.

Rented the times when the shine on his skin went unnoticed by him and the sun was a friend, not a threat. When spiders and sirens were somehow alike and the sharp, summer lightning spelled god.

There was no door through which to request intrusion now. No stairs to climb or remember to sweep. No backyard porch to stack dirty clothes on or jump off of to bravely show others your wings. Justly gone. Rubbed out of his eyes like a busy day.

His father's presence is everywhere still. Even here. Where nothing exists but gravel. It is here he returns like a bottle. It is here we discover him home.