I plodded through snow covered wastes surrounded by the corpses of monuments, chained to an idiot.
If I was alone, I could take refuge here, comforted in my dreamy apocalypse. But I’m stuck here with you.
You’re polluting it all. You’re wasting it! Don’t you see how beautiful all this could be‽ Don’t you miss it?
But I can’t really reach you.
You’re here, but not with me.
Why didn’t you think of me?
[1]
It really was beautiful. I wish you could see it the way I do, it’s even more beautiful in memories. The camera never caught how blue the skies really were, it never does. But you know that, you got to be there before it died. You rode your red scooter and found it, at the end of an end of the road.
You saw a thin dirt path. It was covered in nails and electronics, and other people’s garbage. And it was noon, everything looked alien without a shadow. You passed piles of gravel and concrete. Leftovers from when the town was carved from the dust. And at last you saw it. A wave of Earth. From atop you saw the whole town, and the whole blue sky. The wind played in your hair and made the flowers dance.
But you know all that. These are your memories, the ones you gave to me.
So then how can I forget you⸮ I want these memories but not ones with you. I want it to be me, a better you. You forgot to care, so I can only forgive if I forget.
I’m chained to your example, your ambivalence and mediocrity. Chained to how you lived.
But returning to the matter at hand, how can I pass you by? Whatever I do, you’re still there, you’ll always be, how could you have been me?
[2]
And why didn’t you return? Why didn’t you explore? You were incurious. Childhood was wasted on you. You just sat in a room by a screen, letting it sing away your mind, your thoughts, your time. You were worth more than what you did for yourself.
And I pay off the debt, trying to get ahead of how you put me behind. Trying to grow up by reliving a childhood.
I wish I could have been there to change you. To help you understand, but it necessarily couldn’t have been. We’re two times apart.
And so now I separate myself from you. I became everything you weren’t. The things you couldn’t know, the things you hated, the things you just didn’t have the heart to care about. I became red and purple and blue.
You can’t change though. You can’t follow me, only proceed. You’ll always be in flat midtones of grey. An annihilation of soulfulness and youth. You can’t be sorry for what you are.
[3]
It had all come so fast. I had forgotten about it and then it was gone. It disappeared into cracker boxes. But before that a barren valley. I rode up to that end on an end of a road. There sat the Earth Eater. Rusted and tired, it sat down at the edge. It’s long neck towering over nothing.
I followed the tracks to avoid falling into the cold. Coyotes used to live there. They lead to the machine.
I heaved my body over the tracks, stumbled under the cabin. Climbed up the ladder, balanced along the long conveyor neck, and stood on the edge, feet clinging to where the mesh of the metal wasn’t loose in the floor. I couldn’t see, the sky had turned grey and it was getting dark.
I shook, the clothes wouldn’t keep me warm and the wind cut sharply on the skin in little snowflake points.
But I wouldn’t leave yet.
Because the thing I’m most afraid of, is looking back, and seeing myself the way I see you.
“The truth is, I’m still with you. I never left. No matter what you do, I’ll be here, being you, because you don’t choose to change. Change happens to us. This place, here or not, made us.”
I looked at You
Us
and something fell apart in our mind. It fell down from our head, down our throat, past the heart and the lungs, down the legs making our feet feel heavy.
“We’re right.” we said.
We turn back into our mind, and there is a yellow golden glow, seeping out from behind the inner workings.
“They are building another town, and another mound, and another child will be there.”
The head turns. Another wave of Earth. It’s higher this time.
“And the wave will crash down, and will rise again.” it says.
The thin coat and white gloves climb back down in the twilight. They follow the tracks to the bicycle. They go home.