Scientific Fact #18: The City Took Your Girl
All she ever talked about were skyscrapers. And the subway. Imagine, in one day, to be four stories underground and then thirty stories above. One minute you're deeper than any roots can go, the next you're higher than any bird, but you'd never know it because everything is glass and concrete and steel support beams as thick as a man or two. If you stuck all the houses in town together, all in one lump, even then they wouldn't make up a single office building over there.
You'd sit in the tall grass at night and you'd touch her face and tell her that this is plenty, that there isn't a subway in the world that can make your heart race like this. The night before she ran off her eyes narrowed at you and she said you don't know anything, you'll never be more than an animal, a child in this grass. Fuck this, she said, I'm going to learn to navigate the pavement, the tunnels, the corridors. I don't want to stumble out here in the hills anymore.
What the hell did she know? You get cable. You've been to the city to visit family. It was just the same, but everything in multiples. A bigger anthill, more ants. But when she came back a few years later, out of money, out of breath, she said no, it's so much less than the sum of its parts.
You sat out in the grass again but she couldn't stay still. Let's go to the power station, let's listen to the hum again. Let's go to the lake and smoke a joint by the water. Let's watch the sunrise, have some breakfast, drive your truck through the fields with the radio blasting, drink in the ravine behind the school, climb the dead oak, fuck on your scratchy hand-me-down couch, and then she was done, gone again.
You can't keep her. The city took your girl.
You'd sit in the tall grass at night and you'd touch her face and tell her that this is plenty, that there isn't a subway in the world that can make your heart race like this. The night before she ran off her eyes narrowed at you and she said you don't know anything, you'll never be more than an animal, a child in this grass. Fuck this, she said, I'm going to learn to navigate the pavement, the tunnels, the corridors. I don't want to stumble out here in the hills anymore.
What the hell did she know? You get cable. You've been to the city to visit family. It was just the same, but everything in multiples. A bigger anthill, more ants. But when she came back a few years later, out of money, out of breath, she said no, it's so much less than the sum of its parts.
You sat out in the grass again but she couldn't stay still. Let's go to the power station, let's listen to the hum again. Let's go to the lake and smoke a joint by the water. Let's watch the sunrise, have some breakfast, drive your truck through the fields with the radio blasting, drink in the ravine behind the school, climb the dead oak, fuck on your scratchy hand-me-down couch, and then she was done, gone again.
You can't keep her. The city took your girl.