why I shouldn’t time travel

David Galloway

In fourth-grade band I played the trumpet
mainly because my father had a trumpet 

and so I had a trumpet, not knowing that
convenience and great art seldom go together, 

what I wanted, deeply wanted, was to play the
drums, but those who were going to play

had to go into another room, and that was too
much for me, shyness matched my desire, 

so I was a trumpet player for six middling years,
never excelling, always watching the drums 

and those who played them, so that if I could
go back then I would not tell my earlier self to 

choose the drums, I would not intervene, stealing
the trumpet before I was even born, instead 

I’d show up the day the drumfolk went into the
other room and would walk up to the pudgy 

trumpet player watching them and without a
word of explanation would beat him bloody, 

leave him gasping on the tiles spit-ridden from
that disgusting brass instrument and vanish into 

time as they called the police, so that he’d suffer
but gain nothing from his suffering, and leaving 

over his tears, nothing else of the time-stream touched,
because I have already created a son who in my time 

is ten times the drummer I could have ever been,
which is what I would whisper to that lost 

little boy as he lay crying, huddling, unable to
understand the unjust pain of his terrible world.