virtueless crime

there's a dinosaur that lives in my house.

a turtle. an african turtle. an african sideneck turtle. a jewish armenian african sideneck turtle.

and the turtle is cute. the turtle is entertaining. the turtle tromps happily up and down the tank, or crawls prehistorically atop the basking rock.

the turtle is home far more often than i. the turtle lives here. i, routinely, live out. is it home for the turtle? who can say? not i.

the turtle is happy. so should i be.

young people should survive, live and die by their pets. young people should live with nothing but their pets.

so let me make it just that way. let me make it so that i cannot breathe without the turtle. so that i cannot breathe unless the turtle does so. so that the temperature and rhythm of the turtle tank are mine, too.

but not being able to breathe without the turtle would mean not being able to breathe without my uncle. my great uncle. my great uncle bobby. my great uncle bobby who has a red-eared slider, too.

(an irish african red-nosed red-eared slider. thirty-five years old, too. mine is yet a toddler.)

even in the most abstruse way that i could hope to escape my dependence, the turtle rings me in. the turtle neatly frames me. the turtle, when it's not doing well, shows that i'm not so good at it, either.

it's a turtle. pellet-fed turtle. how bad at it could i possibly be?