Watched them build it block by block, a jail for accessories to the crime of vehicular manslaughter, both direct and indirect. Each week the view diminished, the city slowly disappearing behind a monstrous swath of grey concrete. Can’t think of a structure much more obscene, holding cells for what makes us get there faster. And where did that urge even come from? Everyone who’s anyone knowing the journey is what matters.
Time moves on and I look around to see everyone waiting, wondering if the next step is up or down. She guesses that there’s something more. But it’s the finding it that tricks us all. I have laid down my arms before many a battle, and for that have left with scars in places I only know.
At the end of one such battle, I stood in a wedge of life amongst a wider field of death. There I watched new lives in the midst of discovery. We marveled at each other and I in my disbelief grew soft and still. For despite the asphalt jaws slavering and gnashing around it, this place provided a haven for what I love. Facing everyday that which I did not ask for, that which has been cast upon me, that which was fashioned before me, my throat grows tight and I want to flee. But instead I sit and trace, unsteady, around the blurry borders of my muddled thoughts.
I struggle to crane my neck and stretch myself out, out, just far enough out beyond the band of thieves on my heels. I try to head for the open places, away from the corners, away from the blacktop. I try, but I don’t always succeed.
When I finally step out into the yellow light, I pause on the bridge and hear the kingfisher rattle. I wait and watch for my reward. He shoots up and out then, a sleek bullet streaking across the tracks and back down under the bridge on the other side, his wild cries splintering the air around me.
s. d. stewart 