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kasihyaI don't know what's going on here but it takes place in Schenectady. The idea has been floating around in my head for a while but I don't know where it is going and I don't really care.
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We left at dawn on the longest day of the year. Everyone that we spoke to, from your grandmother to my father’s cousins, said that we needed to go east, so east we went: from apartment buildings to peeling houses with broken-down bikes piled in weedy yards, to the huge derelict building that might have been a factory or might have been a tenement house or might have been nothing at all, abandoned before it was finished. We climbed over the fence and skidded down the embankment just as the sun cleared the tops of the trees in the distance, and crossed the train tracks with its golden orange light burning our eyes.
Most people agreed that it was bad luck to talk before you’ve left your city, but once we crossed the train tracks, we were allowed to talk again, so we said things like, how far do you think it is, and, what do you think it will be like? What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get there? Neither of us had any answers to these questions, so we left them hanging in the air, and we kept walking. The field wasn’t quite as flat as it looked from the roof of the apartment building where we used to meet to plan our journey; there were ridges and dips, and unexpected pieces of twisted brown metal hidden in the grass. You wanted to collect the old nails from the train tracks, but they weighed too heavy in your pockets, and so you dropped them one by one back into the dirt like bread crumbs. I caught at the feathery tops of the grass in my hands and ran the tips up and down your bare arms, even after you laughed and told me to stop.
Let’s go, I said. Don’t you want to make it there before nightfall?
Common sense told us that we needed to pass through the woods before we would find anything worth finding, so we headed straight through the marshy fields towards the dark line of trees turned black by the sun. Our sneakers got stuck in the mud, and water sloshed up into our socks. I took off my shoes after the first hour because we wouldn’t need them anyway, but your grandmother had just bought you new ones for your birthday and you didn’t want to leave them behind.
I can deal with wet feet, but Grandma would kill me if she knew that I’d wasted all her money, you said.
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
We left at dawn on the longest day of the year. Everyone that we spoke to, from your grandmother to my father’s cousins, said that we needed to go east, so east we went: from apartment buildings to peeling houses with broken-down bikes piled in weedy yards, to the huge derelict building that might have been a factory or might have been a tenement house or might have been nothing at all, abandoned before it was finished. We climbed over the fence and skidded down the embankment just as the sun cleared the tops of the trees in the distance, and crossed the train tracks with its golden orange light burning our eyes.
Most people agreed that it was bad luck to talk before you’ve left your city, but once we crossed the train tracks, we were allowed to talk again, so we said things like, how far do you think it is, and, what do you think it will be like? What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get there? Neither of us had any answers to these questions, so we left them hanging in the air, and we kept walking. The field wasn’t quite as flat as it looked from the roof of the apartment building where we used to meet to plan our journey; there were ridges and dips, and unexpected pieces of twisted brown metal hidden in the grass. You wanted to collect the old nails from the train tracks, but they weighed too heavy in your pockets, and so you dropped them one by one back into the dirt like bread crumbs. I caught at the feathery tops of the grass in my hands and ran the tips up and down your bare arms, even after you laughed and told me to stop.
Let’s go, I said. Don’t you want to make it there before nightfall?
Common sense told us that we needed to pass through the woods before we would find anything worth finding, so we headed straight through the marshy fields towards the dark line of trees turned black by the sun. Our sneakers got stuck in the mud, and water sloshed up into our socks. I took off my shoes after the first hour because we wouldn’t need them anyway, but your grandmother had just bought you new ones for your birthday and you didn’t want to leave them behind.
I can deal with wet feet, but Grandma would kill me if she knew that I’d wasted all her money, you said.
