Answer #135 - Not much.

My aunt had a small, lake cabin. I spent a few summers there. There was a swimming platform just past the dock. A conversation, years later, when the big houses filled the shoreline.

Call my mother, tell her I will be late. Give whatever is still warm on my plate to the dog or the orphans - I won't be home until morning.

Walk with me, he said, out to the water and we'll dangle our feet off the dock and the fish will come by. Just this time, let's swim out to the platform and we'll lay on our backs and we'll stare at the sky.

We marched to the tree line and found the old path - painted with berries on our face and our hands - and sat on the branches, building bridges for ants.

We declared war on an enemy state- across the lake where the houses were bigger and the children jumped from high rope swings, and mothers looked on, happily, and served them lemonade on sailboats of their own.

Sometimes after that, you and I didn't even go home.

Walk with me, he said, out to the water and we'll dangle our feet off the dock and the years'll blow by - one more time, let's swim out to the platform and we'll lay on our backs and we'll stare at the wild black sky -

- and we'll never ask why the stars blink out all at once - and why the sun goes down like it does - and why we did what we did, growing up like we did, and why we fell for the ones that we did.

Because here in the real world of blood and charades, where right moral men deal in slavery trades - what little I knew of the good and the bad is a lie, and most days, it was all that I had.

Now my dinner is always cold. And now I always do what I'm told.

But I would, if I could, I'd march to the tree line and find the old path and I'd paint with berries with my face and my hands - and set fire to the shadows that block out the view of the glassy black water and that's what I'd do.

He said, that's what I'd do.

The line between here and there.. would you have changed any of it?