Chapter 1: "He was a moon child born of radiance, ephemeral, and beautiful."

He was a moon child born of radiance, ephemeral,and beautiful. The moon was bold and bodacious, hurling silver beams across the sky the night he was born and then sifting into his mother's hospital bed to kiss the newborn's cheek. But something quiet and subtle had happened, and unbeknown to his mother, drenched in sweat and exhausted after 16 hours of labor, he wasn't allowed to breathe.

Escaping the birth canal, he was given no incentive to cry. No slap on the ass like other babies get and no encouragement to scream out a name, so not hearing its voice, the confused mother didn't bond with the tiny thing, and she couldn't decide on a name, so she asked the nurse, "Could you name him for me?" But there was another problem: doctors couldn't determine if it was a precious baby girl or a bouncing baby boy. So the nurse named him Vulcanne when she spied the pointy ears.

He grew up between skyscrapers and a crooked street off the beaten path. Locating it must have been a challenge because no one visited and no strangers ever appeared at the door. Sometimes he played on a pallet on the back screened-in porch adjacent to the kitchen where his mother stood preparing bottles of milk or cooking something good. 

In the wooded backyard, there were rabbits, squirrels, and sometimes a snake, but he never flinched or cried. They seemed to see he was watching, but they kept foraging for food. If a dog was heard barking in the distance, the animals would run, birds would fly away, and Vulcanne would escape into the kitchen, grab his mother by the hand or bury his face in her skirt.

In the afternoons after a nap, sometimes, he talked to his mother about boots, two pairs of crooked, muddy boots left out on the front porch to dry. He hated seeing the crumbling chips of dirt and mud lying next to the exhausted footwear--laid to the side, the tongues hanging, shoe laces stretched out to dry, like tentacles. He hated the black streaks left when they were taken away and thrown to the floor of his father's lazy pick-up truck, grumbling and moaning, coughing and sputtering until finally catching its breath and crawling uphill. Each day, Vulcanne watched at the window until the truck pulled out of sight, just before sunrise, then he crawled into bed and pretended to sleep so when his mother peeked into the room she would kiss him on his cheek

Vulcanne loved to laugh as well as cry, but his favorite summer past-time was listening to sounds of birds chirping while sitting side by side with his father on the back door steps. Mostly, he played on his own, only venturing into the kitchen when he wanted a hug, but at the same time each day, he stopped his play to stand at the window and wait for his father's gray truck to appear.

Then one day as maple leaves had started to fall, his father forgot to return. Vulcanne looked at his mother as if to ask questions, but nothing was ever said. By summertime, instead of running to safety when he heard a scary sound, Vulcanne had learned to wait at the kitchen door until his mother called his name. For a while, he felt safe but one day he was left on his own until his mother returned with an armful of groceries, and while she was away, something happened.
-M.D.Johnson 
(Work in progress. Leave a comment. Thank you.)