Thread:InsaneAsylum/@comment-10665455-20140306214519

Someday

Kazu & Insa

                 It was in the fragment of the season, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, when we’d ride our bikes down the dead end path. It's strange that all this is so clear to me, now that summer has long since fled, and time has had its way. The last of the graveyard flowers were losing their petals, and their faint fragrance drifts across the cotton field and into my empty house, speaking softly the names of the dead. The trees outside rock back and forth like an empty cradle, their glistened leaves falling like shards of glass. The sky is gray like a slate of misty marble, the rolling clouds pale like a milk puzzle.

                 But some days, like now for instance, I can’t help but remember him. He was the craziest boy I’ve ever met. Not dangerously crazy, but a nice crazy, like someone you’d meet in your dreams. When I was ten, and when he was nine respectively, he would climb through the hole in the fence that separated our backyards, and the two of us would grab our bikes from the garage and pedal to the headlands. We’d gather a handful of small white flowers, and fling them like bombers over the overhanging ghost town.

                 Later we’d climb down the bluff and onto the mouth of the bay, and take long walks along the crashing sea ― observe the swirling long volutes of foam, spreading their mottled shimmer along the gray sand. He’d throw skipping stones out into the water, and just before the ripples faded, he’d make a wish. I remember him, just standing there, sneakers soaked with salt water, eyes closed as if in a frozen prayer. I never knew what he wished for, and it could’ve been anything: a bucket full of diamonds, a ladder to the moon, a time traveling machine.

                 “What <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">did <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">you wish for?” I’d ask. But he’d only smile mysteriously.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Murmured blue-sea mornings, skies of gold, green dusks streaked with lilac, paper airplanes lost in the wind, wish after wish that never came true, as we threw the stones into the water. Every day of the summer, we’d park our bikes sideways on the grass and escape into our own world.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">                 “What would you say if I asked you to run away with me?”  I tried to make it sound like a joke, but he’d push me onto the concrete and call me a coward and so, my question was always left unanswered.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">                 We grew up, as all children do. Summers came and summers left. Slowly, slowly, our friendship wilted. Some days, I would ride my bike down the dead end path and fling my arms out to embrace the rain like they did in movies. But instead of falling in love, I’d hit the curb and fall back into reality. Some days, I’d walk myself down to the beach in the moonlight, and try to make a wish of my own. Instead I would find an empty seashell with only long forgotten memories left in its opalescent walls.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">                 It’s been years since. By now, my tears have dried, stretched like a chain of deep blue pools. Silence hangs in the air, like spilled paint, or an empty clothesline, or an open window. The world is cruel. Enchanted, silent, timeless.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">                  It was all the way back in the fragment of the season, when summer was dead but autumn had not been born. Yet some days, like now for instance, I wonder if he thinks of me as often I do of him.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">                 We led such long, separate lives ahead.

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<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:11pt;margin-bottom:11pt;"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#ffffff;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">End

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