It took us a long time
to get to where we needed to go. The heat coming off the road cut us to pieces
and we kept tripping over the bits of ourselves we left behind on the hot
asphalt. There were people in the trees on the sides of the street and they
made noises during the night that kept us awake, and if we fell asleep on all
the dead leaves the humming of the rusty engines in our minds kept us dreaming
of cars and trucks and planes all moving ahead, leaving us behind. Sometimes,
the people in the trees sang us to sleep and brought us the pieces of ourselves
we left behind, but we kept to the road anyway, and the heat kept cutting us up
and scattering us on the dead leaves we called a bed.
One day we found a
rabbit in a hole it built for itself, and we all held it in our hands while it trembled
and we thought of all the holes we could build ourselves if we let ourselves
slow down. Its little heart beat in time to the humming of the engines in our
minds and I knew we could never stop, we could never slow down, we could never
build ourselves holes in the wet soil and let the roots of the trees and the
people take our bodies. I was afraid of bugs anyway.
It was a trek with no
end; we all knew there was nothing where the road stopped and the real world
began. The trees were either side of us and the dead leaves were stuck in our
hair and we were everywhere, everywhere, all over the road. The rusty engines
in our minds kept running cars over ourselves, and really, what did we think we
could find? We left ourselves behind in the dream summer. There was nothing
left.
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