Eyelash

Height of summer. A swarm of bees in a tree down the road and my mom’s boyfriend has been hired to make them fit in a box. “Here, here is your new home,” he says to them as I watch.

Seeing the bees fly—confused, homeless—I think of the deceiving nature of happiness and what that can mean in the future. How every moment can become flawed. An eyelash could fall into your eye, you could spill your soda, a dream could end just when it was get- ting good.

This is the fragile ground that makes it so hard to be happy. Even at ten years old, I see it. A bee speeds by my face and I flinch, feeling the sugar on my lips.

Communication

All the sips we took got us more sober, we drank oceans. Got roses from our sweets, but they were fake (we had no sweets). I mentioned the lie of our bodies and my boys shrugged, saying nothing, as usual. I suggested we try a new way; I say what I feel and you say something you feel too. In unison, they opened up their mouths and my ears perked like a cat’s, the little hairs along my neck stood on end, my eyes widened. And I could feel the tips of tongues, all the things we mean to say but don’t. We stood like this for what seemed like days, weeks, the party ended, the banquet hall filled for breakfast, lunch, dinner, the party began again. Then, clamp. (Again, in unison.) Mouths closed, jaws clenched, shoulders up. I found some new friends.

The Tunnel

In my mind our success was clear: We were outrunning a train. The light from the tunnel’s exit illuminating our footfalls, we were close enough that I was planning my dive into the bushes on the embankment just outside the walls. Jeremiah’s voice rose above the noise. A wild yell, a loose scream in the din, but so clear it felt whispered in my ear: We’re not going to make it. I opened my mouth to yell back—to argue against it, to say No, no, we’ve got it. We’re so close—when he threw himself into the dirt in front of me and I, without thinking, dropped behind him.

Moments before, in the quiet dark of the long tunnel, we were introspective and slow, trying to place what we wanted from life, grasping for words we didn’t yet have. This was part of every adventure we took together–as soon as we made it onto the rooftop or snuck into the abandoned building, the brief rush of adrenaline satisfied something in our brains, allowing for a meditative state we couldn’t seem to find any other way. The tunnel’s dark provided a more pronounced version of this—a place to be vulnerable and soft, something we couldn’t always manage out in the light. “I’m afraid I’ll wake up and be my dad,” Jeremiah said, his words echo- ing off the tunnel walls. “That I’ll have wasted my life.”

Jeremiah was gregarious and impulsive, quick to excitement or anger, while I was shy and slow to process the world, even-tempered to a fault. We were an odd couple, and in a bigger city we probably wouldn’t have found each other. Both new to town and fresh out of high school, we were bound by our desire to find places under the radar, places everyone else looked past. We combed the side streets, trying to find untended areas where no one would notice us, secret spots we could return to, call our own.

And coming upon the tunnel that day, we thought we’d found the distillation of everything we’d been searching for: a perfect forgotten relic, gorgeous. But halfway through our slow walk, the air changed. We went silent, staring at each other through the dark with an unformed thought. We looked over our shoulders, straight into the cyclops eye of a freight train, entering. The horn erupted, the eerie quiet broke, and we took off running—Jeremiah in front, me behind, trying to match his long-legged strides, the train gaining on us.

Continued in the book!

Joshua James Amberson is the author of Two Plum Press’s Everyday Mythologies (026) as well as many small books and zines and runs Antiquated Future, an online store/zine distro/tape label. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University, and teaches writing courses at Portland Community College.