It was the day of nationalistic pride that you decided you grew too old for this. Back then the Soviet Union was still running and you and the boys would take turns rubbing the lamp to light the coast that brought in the ships. They smuggled in the very things you would one day come to place in separate labeled boxes while you moved from house to house. When the sun hit your roofs and the wind hit the clothes your mother left out to grow dry, you would lay on the hills all day keeping count of the wonder bra’s they traded for cannon bombs (a new business deal). The city you stay in now is void of the smell of willow trees and spring, there are only the pictures you keep hidden of the hats you all wore while pretending to be soldiers at war. You could have been a sailor; you could have been in Barcelona dancing to Nick Drake with us all while we chewed the leather straps from our green bags, with painted pictures of Coney island on it . We have been staying up lately, speaking about you during our late night tales. We always wondered if you’d come home for good, never that you’d leave for welcome mats, commerce and electric bills. And you talked this over with your mother half asleep on her pink couch while your father tuned his violin (he never played that well) and left without a word. The postcard that we’ve sent you (that hopefully finds you) now is only a reminder that you, you are always the boy who dreamt of ships and sat a little bit too still when the waves rolled to our wet pants. Could you really be so tired when you whipped the hair that clung to your eyes, and you stumbled past the docks barefoot with salt stuck to your sleeves? The world was always a trillion shades of nothing to you, even when the houses we built on trees fell away because of the storms and winter. At one point we removed your jacket from the gap behind the door and I slowly said that you grew up way too fast when you said you’re off to meet your fortune. But still you were clinging to something’s that already passed, and finally when the clouds cleared up I told you, that world outside is knocking. |
Submission Name: the boy who dreamt of ships
