In a Can

Someday you’ll go outside and you won’t play Sardines. Sardines, our favorite game. Sardines where one person hides and everyone tries to go and find them, and when they get found you hide with them. You’ll never know your last time playing. You never know your last time doing anything. You just grow up without any warning or chance to say goodbye. I didn’t want to grow up, no one did. It just happened. Then you’re grown and you think back to when the last time you played Sardines. And you don’t remember, and you keep growing. But you’re always playing Sardines, in a way. Life is like sardines, sardines where you hide. Where you hide and are in darkness. The darkness that no one finds until you find someone. And that someone pulls you out of your darkness and into the light. That someone is the balance. The balance of the dark with the light. With peace. And you go back into your can. Your can with the familiar fishes, or faces. The can is where your circle of life and daily routine is. Wake up, do the same thing, see the same people, feel the same feelings, over, and over, and over. It gets more uniform as you grow up. Less play dates, less adventures, less excitement, less time. And when you use your less time for these activities, you stress about the less. About the even less time you have to get things done. But, you get things done, one way or another, through stress and ease, and you start the cycle over again. Still grown up, still in the can

Kamea

Kamea. An old friend. Going way back to when all our worries were about getting stars on our charts. Kamea, a sweet and caring girl, but very energetic. Kamea, who told me she had lived in London and drove to school every day. Kamea, my best friend. Our friendship was put on pause when I moved schools in second grade. I left without a goodbye, without a warning. A melancholic moment for our little 7-year-old selves. Excited for a new school, sad for old friends. I didn’t see her again for five years until sixth grade would start. She had sent me letters over the years to keep in touch, but gradually they started to lessen into nothing. In middle school, we would catch glimpses of each other. These glimpses were different than they had been before. There wasn’t a sprinting build-up where we would jump into each other’s arms. There wasn’t the excited giggle and wave. There was just nothingness. Just glimpses. Here and there. There and here. Then covid came and I wouldn’t see her again until eighth grade. Eighth grade where we ended up on ASB together and something clicked. We clicked. I don’t know what was different, but the click clicked. And we started to get closer again. We rebuilt our friendship and contained a new and older level of trust and understanding. Kamea, whose eyes sparkle when she thinks of an idea. Kamea, who giggles at everything. Kamea, who would get confused as my sister. Kamea, from strangers to friends to strangers to friends.

Sammy Says

Samuel, otherwise known as Sammy. Sammy was a little boy that used to live a few doors down from us. Sammy was a wild one. A wild one indeed. Sammy would fit in the zoo if he were an animal, except he would be too hard to contain. Not only did he act out like crazy, the stuff he would say would be crazier. Sammy said he would grow to be 8 feet tall by the first grade. He said that he didn’t need milk to grow strong, only chicken nuggets. He also said that he was a 42-year-old man and this was his second life. This would make us all crinkle our mouths in the way that you aren’t supposed to be smiling, but it’s too hard not to. We would ask him about his past life and he would tell us. Oh, he would tell us alright. 42-year-old Sammy had a wife and two kids along with a dog named Cooper. Cooper must have carried over into this life as well because as far as I know, Cooper was a one-year-old golden retriever in his backyard. He would tell us about his work and his daily life. The life where he would sit on a bench every day and read the newspaper. Did we think this was true? Not, but maybe. Maybe on the walk home to our house, a sliver of possibility would enter our minds. The possibility that maybe this was Sammy’s second life, as ridiculous as it seemed. This ridiculous thought would quickly be wavered away and we would keep coming over to his house. What Sammy says, goes in this neighborhood. But what went in this neighborhood was Sammy and his family. Went all the way to Indiana and never came back.

The House on Ivy Circle

We’ve lived in many houses. Had many neighbors, but none like this. The neighbors of the home on Ivy Circle. Scratch that, the house on Ivy. The constant movement and many roommates didn’t make the house seem like a home. The rehab house. The halfway house. The house of secrets and crimes. The house named different things from all the other houses around. The house was not a very comfortable environment. The constant aroma of cigarettes and weed is an expected and familiar scent whenever we return home. The sighting of the police and occasionally the FBI aren’t a surprise. The monthly attempts to escape while on house arrest give us something to chuckle in disappointment about. But, all familiar, all part of my home. I still remember the time they were being investigated for a hit-and-run. My brother left his P.E. clothes at a friend’s house over the weekend and he would need them for school. The friend attempted to drop off the bag of clothes… But had dropped them off at the wrong house… The halfway house. This particular bag was taken into investigation at the police station. I wonder what information they found from it. My brother had gotten in trouble for not bringing his clothes that week and it gave us a good laugh. Sightings of the people here aren’t uncommon, they can be seen in their natural habitat of on the sidewalk, having a smoke. The sidewalk everyone avoids, the sidewalk where we take the street instead. Though living here may seem grim, the familiarity cancels it out. The hope that the neighbors will get better keeps us going. Or maybe the hope of new tenants.

Shuffle, Crunch, Plop

In the neighborhood lived a little old man, a man of little words and limited English. A little old man in a little old house with a little old wife. A new day would be marked by the rhythmic shuffle of his feet and the satisfying crunch of fallen leaves underfoot. Every day, the shuffle of feet and crunch of leaves. This was a familiar routine, a shuffle, a crunch, a plop of leaves in the trash. He meticulously cleaned his yard of the leaves. One by one, each one until they were gone. All by hand as well. A rather impressive skill if I do say so myself. This routine, however, was interrupted. The familiar sounds had stopped, a silence replacing them. No shuffle, no crunch, no plop. As if the world knew, the days grew cloudy and gray. The days had seemed to pause. The next day brought the same experience, the same unsettling quietness. Multiple days went by with the leaves piling up. The once, clean lawn of leaves turns into a neglected sea of them. The once familiar sequence of sounds became the familiar sounds of silence. As we wondered what had happened, our wonders were answered. The little old man had lost his little old lady. The big old relationship of a lifelong companion cut short. After a while of the absence of the little old man, his empty driveway was filled with a new white SUV. The start of change on our street. The owner of the vehicle as a medium young man, the son. The son, to stay with the father. The leaves seemed to mirror the growing grief of the man. The big leaf pile sat and it felt as if the world did too. Time slowed, weather grim. The little old man, never to be seen again.