BEB: oak
By Madeleine Gibbons-Shapiro, Artwork by Alexandra Enright
Yesterday, we scratched our knees on open tree trunks, racing through the redwoods, breathing in the hearty soil and using sturdy branches as our microphones; we sang of banana slugs and fireworks and our parents clapped dutifully.
Yesterday, we squatted in the wet sand where the ocean kissed the shore, over and over, constructing a sandcastle with a tenacity that could only be replicated by a seven and eleven year old whose largest care in the world was which flavor of sweet, half-melted ice cream would drip down their chins hours later.
Yesterday, we yanked blades of dark, strong grass from the earth we had torn apart with our neon yellow cleats, piling into great big minivans with automatic doors and unidentifiable stains, telling each other secrets to make ourselves feel older, tying loosely woven bracelets around each other’s wrists and flinging sweaty socks through the air.
Yesterday, we lounged on the unforgiving beige slats of broken plastic lawn chairs, indulging in crispy seaweed and the sunny endlessness of July, sweeping our chlorinated hair over our sunburnt shoulders, somersaulting through self-importance and the electrifying darkness of our pillow-fort at 11pm, way past bedtime.
Today, we crouch under weighted blankets, our tentacles kept to ourselves except through bridges of wavering voices and inexplicable tears, tears that are for all that we have lost and all that will never be the same.
Today, we sit stoic on the shore, fully clothed, with circular sunglasses that reflect the ever-persistent sea, silence and potato chips passed between us under the sky that was perhaps foggy all along, but never engulfed us until now.
Today, we drive in electric cars past the synthetic turf fields, our teammates long gone to other states (both physically and emotionally), our bodies showing the fatigue and stagnation we carry everywhere now, our jackets stiff and black and dry.
Today, we will ourselves to leave the house, hiding from our neighbors for fear that the memory of joy will exacerbate our existing sorrow, dodging the manicured nails and waxed eyebrows and dyed hair and silently screaming that we are not okay, we are not who we once were, (nor do we want to be), but that we would still like you to hold our clammy hands once in a while, to send whispers through musty green sleeping bags to the starry open atmosphere, to surprise us with a steaming mug of that too-sweet hot cocoa, to recline in the bathtub with the pillows and read until it is time to go home, as we all must go eventually.