[excerpt] he's an emancipated punk and he can dance
“Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.”
- Banksy
What I know is this.
People tell stories about the place we’ve inherited as home. They talk of beaded sweat on brows and lips, and the way it drips down necks and backs. They talk of the moss that hangs from the branches of old woman trees, bent and brooding, draped with green lace. They’ll talk, excitedly, romantically, of the descent of fogs, and the fireflies that lead travelers to unwitting ends, as if it’s all some big, grand folktale that exists only as that: a tale, swathed in lace and veils and unable to touch you.
But the stories told, they didn’t tell you about the way the veils cloud your vision. How the fireflies blink behind your eyelids long after you close them. How everything falls, heavy, and stays.
What I know is this: the path was twisting more now than when we first started off. It performed pirouettes and figures-eights under our feet.
It wasn’t that far, probably. Two miles, give or take. The walk to town was longer. But the road, though unnamed officially by the parish proper, was that nature definitive. The road into town led to one place, and the final destination was exactly where you knew you’d end up. This road, this path thinning continuously the longer we followed its course, led me somewhere unknown. Somewhere I’d never been, and had barely agreed to being taken.
Caleb, of course, seemed to know exactly where we were going.
“You like stories, Jayma,” he’d said fact over fiction, taking up all the space in the doorway. I hadn’t invited him in, but Caleb wasn’t good with convention. “I know you do, Jay. Come on, let me tell you a story.”
Spanish moss hung as if from the sky, closing the world to one step-two step, one foot in front of the other. If I was going to back out I should have done in about a mile ago.
- Banksy
What I know is this.
People tell stories about the place we’ve inherited as home. They talk of beaded sweat on brows and lips, and the way it drips down necks and backs. They talk of the moss that hangs from the branches of old woman trees, bent and brooding, draped with green lace. They’ll talk, excitedly, romantically, of the descent of fogs, and the fireflies that lead travelers to unwitting ends, as if it’s all some big, grand folktale that exists only as that: a tale, swathed in lace and veils and unable to touch you.
But the stories told, they didn’t tell you about the way the veils cloud your vision. How the fireflies blink behind your eyelids long after you close them. How everything falls, heavy, and stays.
What I know is this: the path was twisting more now than when we first started off. It performed pirouettes and figures-eights under our feet.
It wasn’t that far, probably. Two miles, give or take. The walk to town was longer. But the road, though unnamed officially by the parish proper, was that nature definitive. The road into town led to one place, and the final destination was exactly where you knew you’d end up. This road, this path thinning continuously the longer we followed its course, led me somewhere unknown. Somewhere I’d never been, and had barely agreed to being taken.
Caleb, of course, seemed to know exactly where we were going.
“You like stories, Jayma,” he’d said fact over fiction, taking up all the space in the doorway. I hadn’t invited him in, but Caleb wasn’t good with convention. “I know you do, Jay. Come on, let me tell you a story.”
Spanish moss hung as if from the sky, closing the world to one step-two step, one foot in front of the other. If I was going to back out I should have done in about a mile ago.