‹ Prequel: In the Month of May
One-Hundred Days
Day Fifty-Three: Mother Nature
We used to sit on your back porch and talk. I would sit and feel the scratches on my skin with your dog at my feet and you would smoke your cigarettes, keeping the smoke away from me as best as you could. I would always cough, and keep my head inside my jeans, just to stay as far away as possible from the smoke, and then you would bury your cigarette into the grass and bring me into your chest.
I would wince whenever you threw your cancer into the yard, knowing that somewhere all of the ashes were seeping into the ground, waiting to reach their way back into your lungs. I’d stay inside of your chest until four, and then you’d show me out to where I could walk home alone. You would watch until I got around the corner, and then you’d back inside, smoke another cigarette, and get ready for the next person who happened to come along.
It’s funny now, how close we live to each other yet how perfectly we manage to avoid it. I know the ways away from your house and you know the ways away from mine, we made an unspoken agreement to keep ourselves away from each other at the start of a new year. We were each other’s young mistakes, and we kept us quiet to others no matter the cause.
It’s funny now to me, as I walk by your house and imagine you living inside, smoking your cigarettes with me sitting on the back porch or lying on your bed. I can picture you inside living as you used to when I was somehow a part of your life.
I walk by and see the stained grass breaking through windows and weeding through keyholes. The weeds and ivy blanket your entire house, left to rot in the summer heat nearly twenty years ago. It’s been twenty years since anyone has visited this town, and I am the first person the animals have seen in ages. Your dog still lies on your porch, somehow still living, waiting for you to come back home.
I walk through this town that we used to live in, where we used to keep the things we did a secret from everyone but ourselves. I pick up my feet through streets I used to drag them along, made unfamiliar by Mother Nature and her growth.
She grows along these streets and keeps them together, acting as glue for cracked concrete. I walk along and drag our memories through the weeds, pushing them apart to make room for empty words and deep scratches along backs. I watch as Mother Nature takes over your home, black stained weeds from the cigarettes you left behind in your escape. You were never there to see the aftermath of your actions, and true to whom you are, you aren’t here now. I watch alone as Mother Nature kills this town, finally letting up after twenty years of crossfire.
I watch alone as our memories are buried in stained weeds, my hand empty and apart from yours. I watch as your house crumbles to my feet, while you live across the country, smiling in the sun that has abandoned this town long ago.
I would wince whenever you threw your cancer into the yard, knowing that somewhere all of the ashes were seeping into the ground, waiting to reach their way back into your lungs. I’d stay inside of your chest until four, and then you’d show me out to where I could walk home alone. You would watch until I got around the corner, and then you’d back inside, smoke another cigarette, and get ready for the next person who happened to come along.
It’s funny now, how close we live to each other yet how perfectly we manage to avoid it. I know the ways away from your house and you know the ways away from mine, we made an unspoken agreement to keep ourselves away from each other at the start of a new year. We were each other’s young mistakes, and we kept us quiet to others no matter the cause.
It’s funny now to me, as I walk by your house and imagine you living inside, smoking your cigarettes with me sitting on the back porch or lying on your bed. I can picture you inside living as you used to when I was somehow a part of your life.
I walk by and see the stained grass breaking through windows and weeding through keyholes. The weeds and ivy blanket your entire house, left to rot in the summer heat nearly twenty years ago. It’s been twenty years since anyone has visited this town, and I am the first person the animals have seen in ages. Your dog still lies on your porch, somehow still living, waiting for you to come back home.
I walk through this town that we used to live in, where we used to keep the things we did a secret from everyone but ourselves. I pick up my feet through streets I used to drag them along, made unfamiliar by Mother Nature and her growth.
She grows along these streets and keeps them together, acting as glue for cracked concrete. I walk along and drag our memories through the weeds, pushing them apart to make room for empty words and deep scratches along backs. I watch as Mother Nature takes over your home, black stained weeds from the cigarettes you left behind in your escape. You were never there to see the aftermath of your actions, and true to whom you are, you aren’t here now. I watch alone as Mother Nature kills this town, finally letting up after twenty years of crossfire.
I watch alone as our memories are buried in stained weeds, my hand empty and apart from yours. I watch as your house crumbles to my feet, while you live across the country, smiling in the sun that has abandoned this town long ago.