---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108-page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/paperback book “Plurality of Nothing” cc&d, v327 (the November 2022 issue) Order the 6"x9" paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Unable To Escape It the cc&d September-December 2022 magazine issues collection book		get the 422-page September-December 2022 cc&d magazine 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

The Pavilion

Wess Mongo Jolley

    There is a light in the open window: Orange streamers decorate the frame. Glow-in-the-dark skulls smile gravely from the corners, while black cats cut from construction paper arch their backs and hiss. The light pours out and down onto the neatly trimmed grass, which is strewn with a million leaves of gold.
    Sinking deeper into the shadows, I’m thankful for the concealing darkness of this suburban yard. Hidden from the neighbors by a spreading oak tree, I’m depending on the night to keep me safe. My pockets protect my hands from the cold, and I keep the collar of my overcoat turned up tightly over my chin. My ragged, silver beard helps to conceal the details of my face.
    Inside, a boy of ten is busy with an ice cream scoop, ladling the entrails from an enormous pumpkin. He deposits the seeds on a sheet of wax paper—trying unsuccessfully to mask his disgust, while gazing at his slimy fingers with an expression of fascinated revulsion. Across the table, his mother is busy with a shiny kitchen knife, carving a toothy smile into a second, larger pumpkin. The boy holds up his hands, moist with mucous, for his mother to see. His mother holds the discarded orange eyes over her own and sticks out her tongue. The boy shoots a wet seed at her from between his fingers, and they both laugh.
    A ghost of their laughter slips through the chill night air.
    Slowly, I back away from the tree and step onto the shadowy sidewalk.
    As I walk down the moonlit streets, I brush the golden leaves aside with my worn boots. A bittersweet odor of decay rises from the piles of yellow and gold. The smell is moist and cool. I breathe it in gratefully, savoring its freshness.
    At an intersection, the streetlights cast warm pools on the cold sidewalks, like four lines of golden pearls, stretching away into the distance. A block later, I disturb a tiny dog behind a picket fence. He barks in annoyance, nipping at my ankles through the slats. I pause for a moment and our eyes meet.
    Away, he says. You are no longer welcome here.
    I understand all too well, and cross the deserted street.
    Occasionally, when there are no aggressive animals to be seen, I pause in the dark canyons between the streetlights. As the night grows deeper, I spy other domestic scenes. Through one window I see a woman sitting alone, sewing what could be a silky wedding gown. In a sparse kitchen, a man pours dozens of miniature candy bars into a large bowl. Seconds later, a tiny hand in a pajamaed cuff stealthily reaches over the table edge, grasps a single bite of candy, and retreats.
    I smile, check my battered old Timex, and pass on, into the night.
    It is 9:00 pm.
    As I enter each circle of illumination, my shadow materializes gigantically behind me, huddles terrified around my boots, and then leaps forward into infinity. Over and over I pass through the golden bubbles, slipping ever deeper into the perfectly laid out suburb.
    As the evening deepens, there are fewer and fewer children visible in the illuminated windows. Upstairs, lamps click off as parents put them to bed for the night. A tiny crescent moon climbs above the rooftops. Fewer cars cruise the dark streets. Porch lights flicker out. Humanity dwindles and disappears. Midnight comes and goes while I walk. By 2:00 am, I am far from the dirty familiarity of the freight yard. For years I have been an exiled ghost, haunting the trains, the tracks, and the underpasses. To be back in the well-tended suburbs again makes me as anxious as the child I was.
    This is no longer my world, I think.
    Darkness now pervades the neighborhood so thoroughly that I can almost taste it. From far away, the quiet chime of a steeple clock strikes three perfect tones. By the sound, I deduce where I am, and re-orient myself. At the final chime, I check my watch again. It is precisely 3:00 am.
    Almost time.
    I take a slower pace now. My steps are smooth and silent. A police car cruises stealthily around a corner and I fade into the shadows, waiting for it to pass. When the car is gone and its lights wink out far down the street, I return to the sidewalk.
    I am a dangerous intruder, I muse. An invisible, undetectable microbe afloat in the veins and arteries of the city. Am I a benevolent microbe, or am I a lethal virus, waiting to attack? Even I don’t know the answer.
    It seems so long ago that I called this neighborhood home.
    Turning a corner, I find that I’ve arrived. Laid out before me like a vast green carpet are several blocks of perfectly mowed lawns, children’s playgrounds and secluded alcoves.
    The sign reads LIBERTY PARK CLOSES AT 11:00 PM. There are fences or walls to enforce that edict, so I ignore the sign, leave the last golden pearl, and plunge into the darkness.
    Even before my eyes fully adjust to the blackness, I can sense the changes. Although most of the park seems accurate to my failing memory, time has not been idle. They have replaced the benches. The trees and hedgerows are taller. The grass, a bit better maintained. I suppose that I really couldn’t expect anything to remain exactly the same for fifty years. Still, I am saddened by the loss of so much of my childhood.
    The thought strikes me dumb. Has it really been that long? Fifty years? Yes, I suppose it has. This park is as new and pristine as... Well, as I was fifty years ago. It’s as if every year that time has taken from me has been granted to this park. I remember a time when the benches and bushes were home for a smattering of old men in dirty raincoats, clutching their bottles in brown paper bags, their fingers and faces, dark and gnarled. As I walk through the shadows, I feel like an embodiment of that distant memory. But instead of staring at them like I did as a child, suddenly I am the apparition itself, gazing back.
    But the city must have become less tolerant in these many decades. Now there is no one to disturb the silence of the night. No sounds of loud snoring, no coughing, no one urinating in the bushes. Just silence: cold, calm and serene.
    I miss the winos and transients. As a child, they were just a curiosity. As an adult, they have become my friends and comrades. Companions on the rough seas of adulthood. Reluctant voyagers, all.
    The wind plays gently with the last October leaves that still cling to the trees. As they flutter, the crescent moon casts a myriad of fractured shadows that shimmer and dance in the night. A single leaf gently dislodges itself and floats slowly to the ground at my feet, fluorescent in the moonlight. I make my way forward, watching the dim outline of my shoes far below.
    Stumbling in the darkness, weaving through the maze of trees and hedges, I quickly find my way to the center of the park. The bushes part and I stand before a circular clearing. The lake is here, and where the grass meets the water, the pond completes the outline of a crescent moon. The arms of water embrace the grass and hold it close. The ripples stroke the shore with a gentle intimacy.
    And, thank God, it is still here.
    In the center of the clearing stands the Pavilion.
    The whitewashed boards and central spire look almost ghostly in the moonlight, throwing their ethereal reflections into the water. For long minutes, I stand at the clearing’s edge, trying to control the torrential rush of memories being here has unleashed.
    My God, I think. Everything I loved and everything I hated. My whole life. Even myself. It’s all still here...
    As children, we would come here to play nearly every good day of summer. We called it “the Pavilion” because it sounded regal and respectful. Wally’s mother told us it was a “gazebo,” but that word sounded too cheap and frilly, and reminded me of the beans that Mom used to force me to eat at my aunt’s house. My grandfather always referred to it as “the bandstand,” but that word felt like a relic of a bygone era. “Pavilion” was a word that brought forth images of knights in shining armor. Of kings and duels! Of great deeds done for noble causes.
    But for all of our imagined grandeur, the Pavilion was a simple structure. It seems even simpler now, as I stand viewing it with the eyes of an adult. I trace the outline in the moonlight: A wooden roof, suspended by eight pillars over a raised octagonal floor. Two sets of five steps each to enter either side of the structure. Except for the two sides where the steps rise from the grass, the platform is surrounded by an elaborate railing which serves as a back for the benches that line the inside.
    More memories: The laughter of children. The sun on our skin.
    Wally and I would spend hours here—swimming in the lake, climbing the trees, running back and forth so wildly that we would eventually collapse together in a panting heap. We were so young and full of life that every minute, every second, seemed vitally important! We had to live every one to the fullest.
    Perhaps it was in those mock battles that our camaraderie began. Along with our friends, we would invade the Pavilion, liberating it from the other kids and then defending it with our slingshots and fists as if it were some valuable fortress. Our gang played the game for hours on end, until the sun had touched the horizon, or until our watches told us we’d better run home or we’d be grounded. Then, as suddenly as we had arrived, all the kids would swarm off the Pavilion, leaving it cold, lonely, and ready to be claimed by the young lovers who came there in the evenings.
    It always saddened me to leave the Pavilion. I would pause and look back for a moment as we ran across the grass in the twilight. It always looked lonely without a dozen kids swarming over it, and seeing it empty always made me a little sad.
    And then Wally and I would leap over the hedge and disappear, together.
    As the two of us grew, many things in our lives changed, and yet we grew even closer. And the Pavilion remained our special place.
    And then, fifty years ago, it all ended. In one crashing instant, my life changed from a happy fourteen-year-old boy to a homeless, frightened runaway. I left this city that night, believing I’d never return. I was a boy with no one to turn to and nowhere to go, and I left what seemed to be a cruel and unjust world for a world I knew nothing about. Fourteen now seems like such a young age to begin running, but deep in my heart I knew that without Wally, I had no reason to stay.
    It has been fifty long years, but I have finally returned. My hands are dark and gnarled in the pockets of my raincoat. There is a rank smell of spilled liquor to my lapels, which never seems to dissipate. How different I am now!
    Or, am I?
    I came to the Pavilion on that night as well. As I turned away, I was certain that I would never see it again. The air on that October night smelled just like it does tonight, and I almost feel like I’m fourteen, all over again.
    The idea thrills me as nothing has in many years.
    Oh, Wally! I groan, looking down at my boots. I stare at them as they stir a pile of yellow leaves, as if searching for a different past. Slowly, I lift my eyes and walk to the base of the Pavilion, and then up the stairs. My old Timex reads 3:36 am.
    The wooden railing under my hand still feels firm beneath the shards of flaking paint. As a child, I remember the Pavilion all new, and brilliant white. In places protected from the weather, the paint still holds, stopping in jagged lines and curling chips of white. But as I look closer, I see that time has not been kind. Unlike everything else in the park, the Pavilion seems to have aged right along with me. There are a dozen broken slats and a hole in the roof shows a smattering of stars. I’m surprised that the structure has not yet been condemned. It certainly will be, soon.
    Slowly, I explore the railing with my fingertips, noting the fluting and beveling done by some master craftsman long ago. In places the paint is totally gone. Bare wood, moist and rotting, weathered by storms and the touch of ten thousand human hands. I place my own hands to where, as a child, I had guarded my position as defender of the Pavilion. Wally stood on the opposite side, guarding the rear flank. In my mind, I can see us there, back to back. Steadfast always in our fight. Together we would fight the world if need be.
    The years, and thousands of hands, have washed most of us away. A hundred weddings have been performed here on warm spring mornings. Lovers and friends have sat on these benches on cool summer nights, watching the sun set slowly over the lake to the west. So many couples. So many friends. So much laughter. So many hands.
    Gently, mine search the outer edge of the railing on the northeast corner. I remember two children, working silently in the dark with a pen-knife. Somewhere on this piece of wood, an oath had been taken. A symbol had been carved. Fifty years ago tonight.
    Ah, yes! There! My dirty fingernail traces slowly through the two intertwining Ws. Tears spring to my eyes as the memory comes crashing back...

*     *     *

    We were both fourteen. Wally stood before me, wet in his swimming trunks, intent on his work. Our clothes lay together on the floor of The Pavilion. We had sneaked away from our homes that night and slipped into the park for a midnight swim. And now we both shivered in the cool October air.
    We’ll catch our deaths of cold, I thought.
    In the darkness we were like two thieves, glancing around nervously, jumping at each whisper from the trees.
    With a sigh, Wally finished carving his W on the railing. With his warm hand on my elbow, he pulled me closer to him and placed the penknife in my shaking hand.
    “Better hurry,” he said.
    I carved my own W while he stood guard, trying to intertwine the limbs of the letters, nervous and frightened that we would be caught. When I was finished, Wally took the knife from my hand, setting it beside us on the bench.
    How long we looked into each other’s eyes that night, I’ll never know. Sometimes we could hold entire conversations without speaking a single word—content to become lost in each other’s eyes, happy always to lose sight of where one of us left off and the other began. There was nothing else in the world that was more important to us than these moments. As long as we were together, we knew we could face the entire world. We didn’t speak of ever being separated, for we were sure it could never happen.
    Why was it that, on that night, a thousand unexpressed emotions were silently spoken? Why did a thousand confused needs finally boil to the surface? What was it about that night, and those two carved letters that made it different from all the others?
    Whatever it was, as the earth spun gently under us, we allowed our souls to brush each other, ever so gently. And in those minutes or hours, the last of a thousand brick walls crumbled into dust. We were left with nothing but each other. The rest of the world faded into the darkness. There was nothing but myself. Nothing but Wally.
    And the Pavilion.
    Wally finally glanced away long enough to retrieve his pen-knife. Wordlessly, he snapped open the smallest blade and pressed the sharp point gently into the tip of his index finger. He stifled a quick intake of breath, and a small trickle of blood squeezed out around the shining blade. In the moonlight, it looked as dark, rich, and sweet as chocolate syrup.
    He handed me the blade, and I repeated his action.
    Into his cupped palm, we each squeezed a few drops of blood. With the stem of a golden leaf, we took turns stirring the dark liquid, mixing it well. For the next ten minutes, we painstakingly painted in the lines. With the sharp point of the stem, we traced each line of the intertwined Ws with the intermingled blood of our young bodies. It was a small symbol, barely visible on the railing, but when it was finished, it seemed to mean so much. We smiled at each other. As Wally wiped the remaining blood off his palm with the leaf and tossed it over the railing, I knew we would never part. That now we would be together forever.
    We laid our clothes into a soft bed in the center of the Pavilion that night. The moon was a slight crescent and gave a cool white glow to our skin. Soon our swimming trunks lay under our heads as pillows, and we melted into each other. His fingers were soft upon my face. Our lips parted, met, blended together. Youthful passion took us, and we were washed, awestruck, into a whole new world.
    The stars whirled in the sky! I could feel Wally warm on my chest... Taste the sweetness of him... And it was the first time! The very first! Suddenly I felt complete, like all my life I had been longing for something that was so abstract as to deny being named. Now, everything seemed so clear! There was a brilliant moment of ecstasy when we were no longer two people, but a single, complete whole. A unity! Truth, light and love! A clear flash of vision, the world on fire!
    On fire with light! Blinding, white light!
    With a violent jolt, my mind cleared. The ecstasy shattered into the night, disappearing without a trace. But the light remained. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether it was real, or whether I was dreaming.
    Perhaps, I remember thinking, we are lighting the world from within...
    And then I heard the voice.
    “Oh, Jesus Christ!” it said.
    And with those words, the vision crumbled. The flashlight wavered for an instant, the moon reflected off a golden badge. A policeman’s hat, outlined against the stars.

*     *     *
    
    We were in shock.
    In silence, we rode in the caged back of the police car. Locked in like two criminals. I held Wally’s hand. They couldn’t deny us that. We trembled in silence as the policeman glared at us in the rear-view mirror. We didn’t even dare to look into each other’s eyes.
    When we arrived at my house, the policeman woke my parents, and then escorted me inside, leaving Wally locked in the car. I ran immediately up the stairs while they talked in the living room below. But I didn’t wait for what was coming. I closed the door to my room, opened the window and dropped the twenty feet to the soft grass, as I had done a thousand times. I ran to the police car, but I couldn’t unlock the doors. Wally tried frantically to jimmy the door from the inside. I crawled into the driver’s seat, but Wally was separated from me by a steel cage.
    The policeman didn’t take long. Soon I saw him talking in hushed tones with my father on the front porch, their eyes avoiding each other in embarrassment. Wally and I clutched our fingers through the grating. They both held small dried remnants of our blood. Through a diamond shaped space in the cage, our fingers met.
    “We’ll leave together,” I said. “Tonight. Don’t worry.”
    He smiled at me. His warm, mischievous smile, now tinged with terror.
    It was to be his last.
    Reluctantly, I eased from the car, silently closed the door, and disappeared into the bushes, scant moments ahead of the policeman. As the patrol car disappeared, I saw Wally’s forlorn face looking at me through the rear window. I glanced back at my house in time to see my father, his eyes still fixed on the boards of our porch. He paused before the door, a look of shocked confusion on his face. Then, slowly, sadly, he entered the house. In my mind, I could see him climbing the stairs, heading for my room.
    His face haunted me that night, and has, ever since.
    I ran.
    But I did not run mindlessly. I ran the shortcut which I had learned years ago. The one route that would take me to Wally’s house fastest. Still, it was across town, and I knew that the police car would reach his house a good ten minutes before me.
    I ran madly that night. I leapt hedges and cleared fences with an agility that I had never experienced. I outran several dogs, fleeing like hell itself was right behind. As if a thousand tortured demons were snapping at my heels, competing for the chance to rip me to pieces.
    When I reached the house, it was already too late. I saw the police car disappear around the corner. Heard a hoarse shout from inside. The sound of something breaking. Creeping up to the window, I looked in.
    Wally’s father was a big ox of a man in a sweat stained tank top shirt and Levis hastily buckled over a bulging beer belly. I had always thought him to be a dangerous man. I had told Wally so frequently.
    From the window, I could see up the staircase to the first landing. Wally’s mother was collapsed on the bottom stairs, wailing wordlessly, drying her tears on her nightgown. His father had Wally cornered under a floral painting at the top of the stairs and was shouting into his face. Broken shards of glass still clung to the frame of the painting and were scattered down the stairs. I thought I could see a spot of blood on his father’s knuckles. Wally’s head was turned to the side, as his father’s words could burn his skin—roast his face from his skull. His body was tense, his shoulders squeezed upwards, arms rigid at his side.
    I don’t remember most of the words. Thankfully, they were mostly lost. Between his mother’s wailing and the thick glass, I could hear only raw, unbridled anger, and a smattering of words...
    “...ashamed...” I heard, and “my only son?... Never!... Not MY son!” And then finally, too clear to ignore, “...I’D RATHER SEE YOU DEAD, YOU SONOFOABITCH!”
    Wally never moved, and with his eyes clenched so tight, I’m sure that he never saw as his father draw back one heavy arm behind his shoulder, poised to strike. I’m sure he never saw the massive backhand coming.
    Oh, God. Oh, my dearest God.
    Was your balance off, Wally? When that blow struck, were you just so surprised that you forgot you were on the staircase? Was the blow really as powerful as it looked? Did it really pick you up and hurl you over the banister?
    Or were you just ready to die?
    No! That can’t be! Goddammit Wally, not you! It doesn’t matter! They don’t matter! We don’t need them! We don’t need anybody! We have each other, and goddammit Wally—you said you’d never leave me!
    Your body fell in slow motion, and when the floor rushed up to your head, you never even lifted your arms to ward off the impact. Perhaps you were dead already. Perhaps it was your father that broke your neck, and not the fall. I heard your body hit with a devastating thud that even reached me outside the window. It sounded like the end of the world. For a fraction of a second, I couldn’t move my feet, but somehow I must have. The next thing I remember, I was there with you on the floor, cradling your body in my arms. Your head hung away from your shoulder at a sickening angle, and I knew you would never hold me again. Never touch me again. Never.
    I remember screaming.
    I remember standing up, staring into the waxen faces of your mother and father, frozen in shock. I remember screaming into their faces. There were no words. I was just screaming wildly, incomprehensibly. Screaming as if I thought my voice would bring you back to life. Screaming as if I thought it would make you fly to the top of the banister once again, and look down at me with that mischievous smile I had loved.
    And then I was running. I don’t remember leaving your house. I don’t remember going to the Pavilion. I just remember standing here in the dark. I reached through the railing and snatched up the penknife from where we had left it.
    That night, as I ran in my hysteria, I thought I could hear you calling to me from the Pavilion. My mind was filled with the image of you, standing there in your wet swimming trunks, beckoning me to come back. The clock on the steeple chimed four times, drowning out the sound of your voice.
    I ran. I didn’t look back.
    For fifty years, I didn’t stop running.

*     *     *

    “Wally, the pain doesn’t get any less, does it? The carving is still here. I can feel it, even in this darkness. It’s been fifty years, Wally. Can you believe that? I thought, after all this time... But I’m finally back and it still hurts. It still hurts so much. I’ve tried to find you again in a thousand faces. I’ve walked through a hundred little towns, searching. Oh, I guess I knew I wouldn’t ever find exactly you. I knew that wasn’t possible. You were dead, after all. But... I thought, perhaps, someday, I would find someone who made me feel like I mattered.”
    I lean my head against the railing and look up at the stars through the broken roof. “They’re not out there, Wally. You’re not out there. There was only one of you in this world, and you died on that October night, fifty years ago.”
    Fifty years ago.
    From far away, the clock on the city hall begins to strike, four slow times. Each individual strike seems to take forever. I sit silently on the Pavilion bench, one hand curled around the engraved railing. The other hand brushing away my tears.
    The Pavilion still feels alive.
    “And look at me, Wally! I’ve become an old man! How could this have happened to me? When we were together, I could never imagine a time when we would actually be old. I mean, that just never occurred to me! I always thought that we would spend a hundred years together, and nothing would change. We’d keep each other young, and we’d live forever! Your eyes would always be bright, your smile warm, your face soft and smooth.
    “We always laughed at those old men who slept in the bushes. We could never understand why anyone would want to live like that. We couldn’t comprehend what kind of tragedy would drive someone to that. I never dreamed it would happen to us. Happen to me.”
    The wind in the fallen leaves makes a light rustling sound. With a sigh, I release the tears I have been holding for so many years. The engraving under my clenched hand is vibrant and alive. The Pavilion cradles me like a lover, holding me tight against the cold. I fancy that I can hear Wally’s sweet breath over the wind. The sound of his footsteps as he climbed to meet me in the dark that night. He climbs slowly, leaving wet footprints, his hair damp on his forehead. I hear his first steps on the wooden stairs. Slowly, I count to myself as he climbs, trying to distinguish his footsteps from the beating of my heart and the rustling of the leaves.
    One—he is stepping, two—he is climbing, three—he is almost, four—he is, five... here!
    “Wally?”
    I force myself to look up, and through my hazy, old, and tear-filled eyes, it seems that I can see him standing there. A fourteen-year-old boy, standing silhouetted against the moonlit lake. He wears only swimming trunks, wet hair clinging to his scalp and water dripping from his fingertips as he stands in the center of the Pavilion. I gaze at him, and then I stand.
    We are exactly the same height now. I too am drenched with lake water, and stand here in my swimming trunks. My body is young and supple again, and my gnarled old hands are soft and smooth. I feel oddly like I have been standing here for a very long time.
    Wally smiles. A deep, mischievous smile. His eyes are dark and wondrous. I feel lost. Before he takes me in his arms, I wipe the stringy, wet hair from my forehead.
    Time stops. There is no policeman. There are only two boys who want so desperately to be one. Two who would not forget. Two who would not be stopped, no matter what stood in their way.
    The night air deepens. The moon passes behind a cloud, and darkness encloses the Pavilion.
    Our laughter is wind in the trees.

*     *     *

    “Michael! Brent! Don’t bother that man!”
    Sunlight. Warm on the back of my neck. I feel cold wood under my hand. The sound of children playing nearby.
    “Excuse us, mister?”
    I open my eyes. Two boys. Probably ten and twelve. They stand together in the center of The Pavilion, looking at me nervously.
    “Would you mind if we played here now?”
    “Michael! I said don’t bother that man!”
    I look over my shoulder at the mother, laying out a blanket a dozen yards away.
    “It’s alright,” I call.
    The boys are still there, standing close, looking at me suspiciously. Eying my ragged beard and clothes. I must be a somewhat unusual sight. As I rise slowly to my feet, I look under my hand for the symbol. In the sunlight, it is barely visible. One would never know it was there, if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
    “What are you guys going to play?” I ask.
    “We’re going to keep the other kids out. This is the Castle.”
    “Castle?” I ask. “In my day, we called it the Pavilion.”
    Tilted heads. Wondering eyes. “What’s a Pavilion?” they ask.
    I stand in silence for a moment, and then smile at the boys. “Funny, but I guess I don’t rightly know,” I sigh. “You ever heard of a gazebo?” They shake their heads no. “That’s good.” I turn to leave, but as I go, I add, “You guys know that tonight is Halloween. Don’t go swimming. You might catch your deaths of cold.”
    I walk out of the Pavilion, but as an afterthought return to the boys.
    “Here,” I say, handing them the penknife. I have never been without it all these years. “I am giving this to both of you, and not to one of you alone. As long as you both shall live, I want you to share this. Never do anything bad with it, and keep it safe for me. Always. Okay?”
    The kids look confused. “Okay.”
    The children are playing in the park as I walk away. It is a long walk back to the freight yard, so I figure I had better get going if I am to get there in time to hop the afternoon train out.
    I can hear laughter behind me, but I don’t look back.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...