[original] didn't mean to make you cry.
jamie's prompt; kites against a chalky sky with bird.
It wasn't the childhood of a 50s sitcom nature, but it was more than enough for any siblings with enough imagination. The concrete roads laid out before them like an infinite blacktop playground, privvy to all sorts for scraped elbows and knees. When they tired of the heat steaming off their streets in the summer, they would flee to the park, where the trees offered shelter and temporary respite. This was their childhood before cars and girls came streaming into their lives. Even then, nothing could take away this childhood spent together and that, that, is blood stronger than water. It's is all's fair in love and war. That's
Entertainment.
In the springtime and following summer heat stroke, they made kites. Their mother taught them early on, figuring correctly that it would lead to long summers of an empty house. She had them tying old newspapers to sticks and stringing them together. Finally they caught on to the ritual, despite their kidling goldfish memories.
Oscar, always taller than both of his younger siblings, even Elena during her growth spurt, would lead them down the five blocks to the park where they'd run and run, praying for a breeze. Sometimes they wished upon the right star, because it would pick up their fragile, little paper kites, thank you for flying with us.
All of this was far away from the now and here, but when the cicadas threw their desperate cries into the air, their minds would roll back the tape to those days years ago, in a city very different from this one. They would look up at these new kites, more sleek and colorful than theirs had ever been, but they would only see black and white and red all over. The plague of nostalgia never loosens its deathly grip on the weak and lost.
All they saw were kites against a chalky sky, with birds.
Even in this desert, where the blue sky is dry but for the crackle of the vultures' hungry bones. And there are the kids next door, scurrying about all summer with nothing to do.
-Hey. You, yeah! You. You fly kites? -Oscar asks.
-You don't need for someone to sell you them! -Elena chimes in.
What a full circle, the rubber burn of car out of control and spinning.
The string is taut and you have to hold on tight tight so that the kite won't float off in the wind. So it won't be just another truth blowin' in the wind. And just watch watch watch for the those trees. Ever read Peanuts?
They eat kites.
-Elena, you work tomorrow?
-Yeah. Tuesday's my day off.
-Me and Oscar are off. We were thinking-
-There's this park.
-It's greenish, which is wild for here, you know?
-And what, you were gonna go, play some hide and seek? What the hell is going on? What game are you two playing, huh?
The dust has only just begun to fall. Crop circles in carpet. Sinking.
Dreaming.
Spinning.
Alejandro grins sheepishly. Oscar drinks his coffee.
-We told the kid we'd come and help with his kite. Him and his friends, I guess.
-With their...? -She doesn't understand where this nostalgia has come from. When did their childhood become this idealized paradise were everything beautiful was enormous and everything ugly could be tossed aside? She knew, probably better than both her brothers, that their childhood of scraped knees and sweat-gleaned bodies held more than simply the bright vitality of youth. It was also years of grief over a hole in their chests, it was food stamps and coupons, insults and racism and bullies laughing at their accents, at what their tongues could and couldn't imitate.
And, yet.
The sky was peppered with clouds today, but the all reports said it would be smooth sailing tomorrow.
-Sometimes I wonder what the hell Einstein was thinking -Elena tells them as the wind whips at their window, calling all, calling all... -The law of relativity. What the fuck did he know about relatives?
-He had kids, didn't he?
-No. What the hell kind of legacy would that be to live up to?
-Dios mio. Suicide, step one.
-Safety off.
-Legacies are worse than poison.
-Thank god Mirta never left us anything like that.
-She would have if she could've.
-Huh. Well, she left us nothing but a prayer, a voice and a morality worse than a prison's chain's.
-That's not a legacy, that's a dead weight.
-That's a memory.
-That's the law of relativity.
They laugh, and take their sips.
They laugh, and in the sky some large, nearly incomprehensible mass of gases, fire and myths, it look down on them, and considers flashing bright enough to catch those pretty ribboned tails on fire, and chuckle as the string catches and burns their little hands.
For Icarus' sin.
For aiming so high.
For dreaming.
For remembering the past much more vividly than any present tense.
It wasn't the childhood of a 50s sitcom nature, but it was more than enough for any siblings with enough imagination. The concrete roads laid out before them like an infinite blacktop playground, privvy to all sorts for scraped elbows and knees. When they tired of the heat steaming off their streets in the summer, they would flee to the park, where the trees offered shelter and temporary respite. This was their childhood before cars and girls came streaming into their lives. Even then, nothing could take away this childhood spent together and that, that, is blood stronger than water. It's is all's fair in love and war. That's
Entertainment.
In the springtime and following summer heat stroke, they made kites. Their mother taught them early on, figuring correctly that it would lead to long summers of an empty house. She had them tying old newspapers to sticks and stringing them together. Finally they caught on to the ritual, despite their kidling goldfish memories.
Oscar, always taller than both of his younger siblings, even Elena during her growth spurt, would lead them down the five blocks to the park where they'd run and run, praying for a breeze. Sometimes they wished upon the right star, because it would pick up their fragile, little paper kites, thank you for flying with us.
All of this was far away from the now and here, but when the cicadas threw their desperate cries into the air, their minds would roll back the tape to those days years ago, in a city very different from this one. They would look up at these new kites, more sleek and colorful than theirs had ever been, but they would only see black and white and red all over. The plague of nostalgia never loosens its deathly grip on the weak and lost.
All they saw were kites against a chalky sky, with birds.
Even in this desert, where the blue sky is dry but for the crackle of the vultures' hungry bones. And there are the kids next door, scurrying about all summer with nothing to do.
-Hey. You, yeah! You. You fly kites? -Oscar asks.
-You don't need for someone to sell you them! -Elena chimes in.
What a full circle, the rubber burn of car out of control and spinning.
The string is taut and you have to hold on tight tight so that the kite won't float off in the wind. So it won't be just another truth blowin' in the wind. And just watch watch watch for the those trees. Ever read Peanuts?
They eat kites.
-Elena, you work tomorrow?
-Yeah. Tuesday's my day off.
-Me and Oscar are off. We were thinking-
-There's this park.
-It's greenish, which is wild for here, you know?
-And what, you were gonna go, play some hide and seek? What the hell is going on? What game are you two playing, huh?
The dust has only just begun to fall. Crop circles in carpet. Sinking.
Dreaming.
Spinning.
Alejandro grins sheepishly. Oscar drinks his coffee.
-We told the kid we'd come and help with his kite. Him and his friends, I guess.
-With their...? -She doesn't understand where this nostalgia has come from. When did their childhood become this idealized paradise were everything beautiful was enormous and everything ugly could be tossed aside? She knew, probably better than both her brothers, that their childhood of scraped knees and sweat-gleaned bodies held more than simply the bright vitality of youth. It was also years of grief over a hole in their chests, it was food stamps and coupons, insults and racism and bullies laughing at their accents, at what their tongues could and couldn't imitate.
And, yet.
The sky was peppered with clouds today, but the all reports said it would be smooth sailing tomorrow.
-Sometimes I wonder what the hell Einstein was thinking -Elena tells them as the wind whips at their window, calling all, calling all... -The law of relativity. What the fuck did he know about relatives?
-He had kids, didn't he?
-No. What the hell kind of legacy would that be to live up to?
-Dios mio. Suicide, step one.
-Safety off.
-Legacies are worse than poison.
-Thank god Mirta never left us anything like that.
-She would have if she could've.
-Huh. Well, she left us nothing but a prayer, a voice and a morality worse than a prison's chain's.
-That's not a legacy, that's a dead weight.
-That's a memory.
-That's the law of relativity.
They laugh, and take their sips.
They laugh, and in the sky some large, nearly incomprehensible mass of gases, fire and myths, it look down on them, and considers flashing bright enough to catch those pretty ribboned tails on fire, and chuckle as the string catches and burns their little hands.
For Icarus' sin.
For aiming so high.
For dreaming.
For remembering the past much more vividly than any present tense.