gurgles
look! a new story where . aren't you excited!
Whatever date.
Whatever place. (okay, a patch of grass in North Dakota)
Stop and I, out of pure and innocent boredom, decided to take a walk. We walked for eight hours, three minutes, and ninety-two seconds. Then I stopped my watch and sat down. The scenery along the way was amazing. But let me back up… we woke up thinking “death! Oh damnity death! Death death deathitty death death death! Dead! Skeletal! Bone-eating disease! Meat meat!” which scared us, considering our situation. We ended up getting dressed, backs turned to one another while talking about the day, our dreams, and why we had meat meat leftovers for breakfast. We concluded that A) we wanted to take a walk; B) we both had dying dreams, blurry memories of rocket roller coasters and babies on platters, and C) we didn’t know why we had meat meat leftovers for breakfast. Knowing fully that A would get us into trouble since it required severe sneakage, we decided to take a run for it. Stop and I then made our game plan. We sat on our beds, facing each other, took the floral stationary provided us by the hospital, and began to draw our plan.
Stop is really good at drawing, like he can sketch dreams onto paper and do amazing things with a stubby-ass pencil. I learned this because as I explained the escape plan to him, he just drew, drew, drew, and when I looked at the paper he had managed to draw what I was saying. No way of explaining it but that. It was awesome.
Our game plan was: leave.
No, I’m kidding. We couldn’t do that because we couldn’t get caught. We both didn’t want to stay at ECCC.
Our game plan was: I ran off to the front desk nurse, wearing my home clothes that were under my bed (brought by my mom). I asked her if she had seen my mother, who I knew was at work. I pulled this on as long as I could, and then Stop, wearing HIS home clothes, came up to me at the front desk and said “I found her. She wants us outside, Essie.” It worked perfectly because the nurse didn’t know who I was, or who Stop was, and figured we were just let out. And she didn’t check us because we had hidden our wristbands. So much for hospital safety. And suddenly, there we were, A.W.O.L. Absent With Out Leave.
Outside of the hospital it was very sunny. We walked together to Samdaisy, a vintage street, and crawled behind a parked car to think. Stop and I decided that the best thing to do would be to get further away and then attack our “things to do before death” list. Then we walked to Tennessee. No, not the real one. Our city is split into the United States like a deformed cake. For some deranged reason the founders of Trish decided it should be a mini-US. Maybe because we are vaguely shaped like the country, but I think it’s still pushing it. The hospital was located in West Virginia. Then we took a detour to Tennessee. We wanted to see it. Then we crawled up through Missouri and Nebraska. At that point we were in South Dakota. We got tired, went to a gas station, drank SO MUCH WATER, and then moved on. In Missouri this little girl started following us. We didn’t know what to do. She had huge huge eyes and a very big set of white teeth. She kept screaming “mommy on a patch of grass!” over and over. Then suddenly her voice turned into a sort of melodic ness. Then it was singing. Really beautiful singing. She started to sing a song.
Mommy on a patch of grass
Left me yesterday
Mommy on an empty bike path
Waited for the train!
Easy escape
To the mansion on the cape
Doesn’t exist but
Neither does my
MOMMY ON A PATCH OF GRASS.
Cloud formations money won’t last
Every second then turns to the past
Because
I’m alone without my mommy on a patch of grass
It was really intriguing and beautiful. So we let her follow us. I kept checking behind us to see if she was still there, like a heeling puppy. Her name is Isadora, but no one calls her that. Every calls her Sunshine. It fits her perfectly. No one in the world has little cheeks as rosy and freckled and delicate hands and sandy brown hair that falls thick into wide open eyes. She has a teddy bear named Frankfurt, Germany. He trailed behind her on the dirt road, collecting dust and kicking up a cloud. Sunshine had on a little blue dress that stopped just below her knobby knees. She wobbled when she walked. Stop and I just kept going, and started talking to her. She told us her life story. As she talked, I sort of zoned out and started staring at our surroundings. We had long ago left the big city. We were in what looked like 1907. The road was dirt, the land around us was made up of vast low corn fields, and farmers did their work by hand in all directions. The sky was a sparkly blue and the road seemed to stretch forever. I felt like I was living “roll of thunder, hear my cry.”
When we reached North Dakota, it was eight o’ clock. I was tired and hungry and so was Sunshine. Stop wanted to achieve one of his life goals first. We stepped into a tattoo parlor on Guadalupe. The next thing I knew I was covered in amazing tattoos. I walked onto the street outside of Tyler’s Tattoos. It was blurry, black with bright lights everywhere and splotches of neon colors. I looked down at my arms under a street lamp. It was a relatively painless process (surprisingly) and I think I look amazing. My arms are purple, turquoise, yellow, white, maroon, black, blue, indigo, orange, green, purple, and pink. I have a forest on one arm, the trees, leaves, animals, and ground painted out of the corresponding colors but its not just flat color, it’s made of words. The words are poems by Pablo Neruda. My other arm is childhood. There are little kids and white houses and suburbia jump ropes pools summer and overalls. Intertwined in the air and clouds and sky and water are poems by Langston Hughes. I like that arm more, but I don’t dislike the other one. I didn’t get any other tattoos.
Stop picked up Sunshine and held her on his hip, bouncing her every once in a while. She squeezed Frankfurt, Germany, and asked if she could touch my arms. I let her trace the trees and prod the roof shingles on my arms, and then we walked on.
w00t. i love the last part, don't youuuu?
Whatever date.
Whatever place. (okay, a patch of grass in North Dakota)
Stop and I, out of pure and innocent boredom, decided to take a walk. We walked for eight hours, three minutes, and ninety-two seconds. Then I stopped my watch and sat down. The scenery along the way was amazing. But let me back up… we woke up thinking “death! Oh damnity death! Death death deathitty death death death! Dead! Skeletal! Bone-eating disease! Meat meat!” which scared us, considering our situation. We ended up getting dressed, backs turned to one another while talking about the day, our dreams, and why we had meat meat leftovers for breakfast. We concluded that A) we wanted to take a walk; B) we both had dying dreams, blurry memories of rocket roller coasters and babies on platters, and C) we didn’t know why we had meat meat leftovers for breakfast. Knowing fully that A would get us into trouble since it required severe sneakage, we decided to take a run for it. Stop and I then made our game plan. We sat on our beds, facing each other, took the floral stationary provided us by the hospital, and began to draw our plan.
Stop is really good at drawing, like he can sketch dreams onto paper and do amazing things with a stubby-ass pencil. I learned this because as I explained the escape plan to him, he just drew, drew, drew, and when I looked at the paper he had managed to draw what I was saying. No way of explaining it but that. It was awesome.
Our game plan was: leave.
No, I’m kidding. We couldn’t do that because we couldn’t get caught. We both didn’t want to stay at ECCC.
Our game plan was: I ran off to the front desk nurse, wearing my home clothes that were under my bed (brought by my mom). I asked her if she had seen my mother, who I knew was at work. I pulled this on as long as I could, and then Stop, wearing HIS home clothes, came up to me at the front desk and said “I found her. She wants us outside, Essie.” It worked perfectly because the nurse didn’t know who I was, or who Stop was, and figured we were just let out. And she didn’t check us because we had hidden our wristbands. So much for hospital safety. And suddenly, there we were, A.W.O.L. Absent With Out Leave.
Outside of the hospital it was very sunny. We walked together to Samdaisy, a vintage street, and crawled behind a parked car to think. Stop and I decided that the best thing to do would be to get further away and then attack our “things to do before death” list. Then we walked to Tennessee. No, not the real one. Our city is split into the United States like a deformed cake. For some deranged reason the founders of Trish decided it should be a mini-US. Maybe because we are vaguely shaped like the country, but I think it’s still pushing it. The hospital was located in West Virginia. Then we took a detour to Tennessee. We wanted to see it. Then we crawled up through Missouri and Nebraska. At that point we were in South Dakota. We got tired, went to a gas station, drank SO MUCH WATER, and then moved on. In Missouri this little girl started following us. We didn’t know what to do. She had huge huge eyes and a very big set of white teeth. She kept screaming “mommy on a patch of grass!” over and over. Then suddenly her voice turned into a sort of melodic ness. Then it was singing. Really beautiful singing. She started to sing a song.
Mommy on a patch of grass
Left me yesterday
Mommy on an empty bike path
Waited for the train!
Easy escape
To the mansion on the cape
Doesn’t exist but
Neither does my
MOMMY ON A PATCH OF GRASS.
Cloud formations money won’t last
Every second then turns to the past
Because
I’m alone without my mommy on a patch of grass
It was really intriguing and beautiful. So we let her follow us. I kept checking behind us to see if she was still there, like a heeling puppy. Her name is Isadora, but no one calls her that. Every calls her Sunshine. It fits her perfectly. No one in the world has little cheeks as rosy and freckled and delicate hands and sandy brown hair that falls thick into wide open eyes. She has a teddy bear named Frankfurt, Germany. He trailed behind her on the dirt road, collecting dust and kicking up a cloud. Sunshine had on a little blue dress that stopped just below her knobby knees. She wobbled when she walked. Stop and I just kept going, and started talking to her. She told us her life story. As she talked, I sort of zoned out and started staring at our surroundings. We had long ago left the big city. We were in what looked like 1907. The road was dirt, the land around us was made up of vast low corn fields, and farmers did their work by hand in all directions. The sky was a sparkly blue and the road seemed to stretch forever. I felt like I was living “roll of thunder, hear my cry.”
When we reached North Dakota, it was eight o’ clock. I was tired and hungry and so was Sunshine. Stop wanted to achieve one of his life goals first. We stepped into a tattoo parlor on Guadalupe. The next thing I knew I was covered in amazing tattoos. I walked onto the street outside of Tyler’s Tattoos. It was blurry, black with bright lights everywhere and splotches of neon colors. I looked down at my arms under a street lamp. It was a relatively painless process (surprisingly) and I think I look amazing. My arms are purple, turquoise, yellow, white, maroon, black, blue, indigo, orange, green, purple, and pink. I have a forest on one arm, the trees, leaves, animals, and ground painted out of the corresponding colors but its not just flat color, it’s made of words. The words are poems by Pablo Neruda. My other arm is childhood. There are little kids and white houses and suburbia jump ropes pools summer and overalls. Intertwined in the air and clouds and sky and water are poems by Langston Hughes. I like that arm more, but I don’t dislike the other one. I didn’t get any other tattoos.
Stop picked up Sunshine and held her on his hip, bouncing her every once in a while. She squeezed Frankfurt, Germany, and asked if she could touch my arms. I let her trace the trees and prod the roof shingles on my arms, and then we walked on.
w00t. i love the last part, don't youuuu?